announcement from Harvey Whitehouse and David Sloane Wilson

Dear Colleagues,

We recently received a planning grant from the JTF to develop a larger proposal aimed at integrating the most promising scientific approaches to the study of religion currently available, doing so within an overarching evolutionary framework. A key feature of the methodology will be to establish ‘field stations’ for the intensive study of religious communities using methods borrowed from anthropology, psychology, and evolutionary biology. We envisage a sub-granting program enabling us to select on a competitive basis the most promising experimental designs to be replicated across the field stations and to develop also targeted projects on the evolution of religion.

During the current planning year, we are seeking to bring together several currently disparate schools of thought on religion in ways that will draw on the strengths of each and allow us to invent and deploy novel methods in high-impact fresh empirical research. This plan has three main components: first, the formation of a small group of scientists who will take the lead in brainstorming approaches that integrate ‘top down’ (ultimate causation) and ‘bottom-up’ (proximate causation) theories of religious representations and systems; second, the establishment of a ‘community of interest’, enabling online discussion of the evolving research proposal among a broad range of scientists engaged in the study of religion; third, piloting of new research designs in Binghamton, New York. The reason for choosing Binghamton as our first field site is because it is already being studied from an evolutionary perspective as a representative American City (seehttp://evolution.binghamton.edu/bnp), enabling us to add a religious dimension to an already extensive database. Work during the planning grant will include creating an inventory of religious congregations for the city of Binghamton as the beginning of a longitudinal database, initiating partnerships with at least six congregations in the city, developing survey materials, ethnographic methods and so on for work with the congregations.

The grant employs Jon Lanman (Oxford) and Ian Macdonald (Binghamton) and covers the costs of meetings and pilot research. We are writing to ask if you would be willing to join the ‘Community of Interest’ (COI) at this point. Members will receive periodic information on the developing research designs and plans for the establishment of field stations and will be asked to contribute comments and ideas to the web-based discussion forum.

To join the COI, simply contact Ian Macdonald (ifmacdonald@gmail.com) requesting that your name be added to the list of Faculty and Scholars on the Evolutionary Religious Studies (ERS) website. We will then keep you up to speed with developments via email, also using the ERS website to post news and other material relating to this project.

I do hope you will join us in this exciting venture.

All best,
Harvey and David