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Was Jeffery Epstein a Satanist?

By David Robertson 

Introduction 

In recent weeks, I have seen many social media posts saying something like “The conspiracy theorists were right”. As a scholar of conspiracy theories and religion, I am acutely aware of how the label “conspiracy theory” has historically been weaponised to dismiss legitimate scrutiny of the powerful. Yet even I was struck by the sheer scale of organised collusion among the global elite revealed in the unsealed Epstein documents.

There is absolutely no doubt that the unsealed files contain damning evidence of organised abuse, paedophilia, trafficking, torture, and more. But I’ve also seen many comments saying that Epstein and his circle were Satanists. Sometimes it’s being used as a metaphor to express a profound disgust, but comments like the one pictured above clearly mean it in a literal, religious sense. As a scholar working in this area for many years, I saw immediately that the claims found in a few files about rituals involving abuse, infanticide, cannibalism and worse, had a striking similarity to claims made during the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic of the 1980s and ‘90s. These parallels demand careful consideration, not to cast doubts on the whole collection of files, but rather to ensure that the strong empirical evidence they contain is not contaminated with unverifiable and fantastical claims.

The Satanic Ritual Abuse scare (SRA)

From the late 1960s, parents across the West became concerned about the ideas being espoused by their increasingly radical and rebellious children. Rock music, roleplaying games, marijuana, and an interest in Eastern and indigenous religions were framed not simply as moral threats but as an active attempt to indoctrinate children into the occult. In popular bestsellers like The Satan Seller and Michelle Remembers, this morphed into a terrifying narrative in which an vast global network of Satanic sleeper-cells was systematically abducting and abusing children as part of a plot to destroy civilisation.

By 1990, this narrative had achieved mainstream acceptance. Politicians, law enforcement, medical professionals, academics, and the press across the Western world treated the existence of this clandestine Satanic religion as fact. Some accounts numbered these Satanists in the millions, yet when they were tested in court, they failed to produce any empirical evidence. High-profile cases like McMartin Preschool trial (US), Christchurch (NZ), Orkney and Rochdale (UK) resulted in no lasting prosecutions and have been heavily criticised since. The labyrinthine tunnels under preschools, the bodies of countless murdered infants, and the physical evidence of the alleged abuse described by the prosecution were never found. The child witness testimony, often elicited through discredited techniques like hypnotic regression and coercive questioning, was later deemed fundamentally unreliable. Unlike what was heard in court, the childrens’ full testimony included many fantastical or dreamlike elements, such as adults flying or shape-shifting. Lynley Hood’s meticulous account of the Christchurch tragedy, A City Possessed, demonstrates conclusively how investigators’ pre-existing belief in a vast Satanic conspiracy, together with parents’ anxiety, led them to manufacture a crisis where none existed.

The simple, scholarly consensus is that the religion at the heart of the SRA panic does not, and never did, exist. Scholars of new religions and occultism consistently reject the claim. There are Satanists, but very few of them, and we know their histories, their texts and their practices. None of them advise any kind of abuse, ritual or otherwise. The majority don’t even literally “worship Satan”, but rather are atheists who see Satan as a symbol of the individual will and intellectual freedom. The Satanists of SRA and the Epstein files are rather part of the Christian imagination. SRA proponents erroneously present all of the occult, and often new religions too and even spirituality as Satanism. For them, Satanism is literally just negative Christianity—upside-down crosses, black robes for white, obscene sacraments. It is a projection of cultural fears onto an invented “Other”, so it stands to reason that their sacred rituals would involve the most profane acts imaginable.

This process of Othering has a long and ugly lineage. The same accusations of infanticide, cannibalism, and orgiastic rituals levelled at SRA practitioners were previously aimed at fourth-century Gnostics, medieval witches, and Jewish communities across Europe for centuries. These claims, and the language of vermin, and disease they typically employ, has a social function – by portraying the Other as less than human, we justify our dominance over them. Similarly, by portraying their crimes as supernatural in origin, we remove human agency from the equation, reframing it as part of a cosmic battle.

Although state-sponsored search for Satanists waned, the underlying narrative did not disappear. The Aberdeen journalist Robert Green has been investigating the claims of Hollie Greig, a teenager with Down’s Syndrome, since 2000. In Hampstead in 2014, there were public protests outside a local church after a man coached his children to make ritual abuse claims against his ex-partner in a failed attempt to gain custody. Several newspapers reported claims that Jimmy Savile was involved in Satanism (see below), and Operation Midland (2014-2016), accused several prominent political figures of involvement in a paedophile ring in Parliament. It collapsed after an enquiry showed that the key witness, Carl Beech, was a serial fantasist and convicted child abuser. In 2016, Pizzagate (a forerunner of QAnon) attempted to “decode” emails from Democrat politicians to reveal paedophilic and cannibalistic messages. Yet at the same time, Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew, Donald Trump and any number of Bishops seemed time and again to avoid investigation.

SRA in Epstein Files

We need to bear this historical context in mind while considering the claims in the Epstein files. The most widely-circulated document is a 2019 FBI report of an interview with a man claiming to be an Epstein victim. The man claimed, amongst other things, that his whole family was part of the abuse ring, that he was raped by Epstein, George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton while Trump watched, that his feet were ritualistically cut with a scimitar, and that he saw babies being dismembered, disembowelled, and the attendees eating the faeces. What is often omitted from these discussions is the investigating detective’s own prefatory email, which points out a number of familiar reasons not to pursue the claims further—the claims were “repressed memories” obtained through hypnotic therapy, there was no supporting evidence or witness proffered, the witness appeared emotionally unbalanced, and was encouraged to come forward by a person known to promote SRA claims. I would add that the incongruous detail about the scimitar is a clear example of the fantastical and dreamlike nature of these accounts.

Another document, since withdrawn, has Trump present as babies are killed, and girls being strangled in full view of guests and buried under the golf course in Mar-A-Lago. It is worth noting however that these supposedly took place at parties, not in religious rituals. And while there are around fifty mentions of “cannibal” or “cannibalism” among the three million files, none of them are allegations that it happened. That doesn’t stop posters like the one below from extrapolating it from earlier (equally flimsy) accusations however.

 

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Religion, Spirituality and Public Health

Suzanne Newcombe and Karen O’Brien-Kop

Clashes of truth claims in global public health are on the rise. From US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s policy assaults on vaccine science[1] to the highest measles outbreak in England for more than a decade,[2] stories of health science scepticism often have roots in minoritised groups and can include religious reasoning of different kinds. Meanwhile the global ‘complementary and alternative medicine market’ continues to grow, estimated at USD 193.36 billion in 2025,[3] providing health treatments that are often derived from, or which support, traditional religious or spiritual worldviews.

Exploring how health and wellbeing decisions are always part of a multi-layered process, Religion, Spirituality and Public Health: Competing and Complementary Epistemes challenges assumptions of ‘culture wars’ between biomedicine and ‘alternatives’ and between biomedical scientific thinking and religious or ‘traditional’ ontologies. Real-life decisions are made not solely in reference to biomedical epistemes, but also systems of embodied rationality, systems of reasoning and negotiations with power and authority that can be understood and articulated as rational while also experiential. This book uses the tragic global crisis of Covid-19 to interrogate fundamental questions about how we can better handle personal and collective public health decisions. It explores the way the religious and scientific spheres of human activity can be understood as irreducibly connected and implicated in many decisions about health and wellbeing on both the individual and public policy levels.

Each chapter attempts to meet specific communities on their own terms, resisting the essentialising and belittling encounters more commonly found between public health and religion. The editors highlight a series of global case studies, exploring in depth the way pragmatic, pluralistic decisions were made within the context of apparently incompatible ontologies (e.g. Gods, ancestors, spirits, biomedical interventions and traditional frameworks for promoting health). Case studies of public health policy are interrogated at national or state level for Iran and Tamil Nadu in India, while individual, pragmatic navigations of pluralistic realities are explored with case studies set in the NHS in Britain (Ugba), Korean musok (Sarfati) and Afro-Brazilian religiosity (Bahia).  Conversely, the potentially profound significance of ontological framing in health and healing is explored with reference to compliance with public health policy (Roussou; Deeley) and in the framings of increasingly popular ‘self-healing’ with psychedelics (Steavu).

Theoretical interventions include the development of a ‘Pluriversal Philosophy of Lived Religion’ (O’Brien-Kop) and rethinking epistemological assumptions about benchmarks, baselines and valid bases of truth. The volume questions the value of some of the standard assumptions of the biomedical episteme, including calling for a strong agnosticism about ontologies (Cheung) while maintaining focus on criteria of clinical efficacy, avoidance of harm, and more rigorously interrogating the experiential episteme of both patients and practitioners (Newcombe). Professor Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad (Fellow of the British Academy) concludes the volume by drawing attention to the way this volume contributes to a much-needed reworking of ‘the ecology of biomedicine through greater analytic as well as practical focuses on experiences of wellbeing’ (p. 277).

If we are going to design more inclusive policy and look at simple, practical ways to alleviate suffering, we must pay more attention to the pragmatic pluralities that more accurately describe how people navigate their life choices. And in relation to public health, we should also take seriously conspiracy-theorising as an epistemological act and system that is underpinned by persuasive reasoning and rationalities. Without understanding the functioning of such theorising, public health policy is weakened in its attempts to address the spread and appeal of counter-factual claims, particularly in minority or minoritized communities.

This book is a concentrated attempt to advance the conversation between biomedical science, religion and belief, as well as cultivate a more honest assessment about the types and value of specific knowledge-making practices that coexist in the contemporary world. This book offers a rich picture of multiple epistemic practices that are overlapping, touching, and sometimes sharply colliding. It invites us to consider more fully what a more radically plural, ontologically sensitive understanding of global society might encompass.

The book is available in print format and as open-access research in downloadable ePub/PDF format from Liverpool University Press (published 21 October 2025):

https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.3828/9781836245643

[1] JFK uses religious reasoning of different kinds to justify his views, include likening vaccine administration to children like sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church (NBC News 2024) https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/rfk-jr-vaccines-cdc-fascism-abuse-catholic-church-autism-conferences-rcna181605.

[2] In 2025 the England measles epidemiology report of the UK Health Security Agency stated: ‘In 2024 there were 2,911 laboratory confirmed measles cases in England, the highest number of cases recorded annually, since 2012.’ (UK Health Security Agency 2025) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/measles-epidemiology-2023/confirmed-cases-of-measles-in-england-by-month-age-region-and-upper-tier-local-authority-2025

[3] Precedence Research 2025, https://www.precedenceresearch.com/complementary-and-alternative-medicine-market

Cover photo: By Igreja Dimensão from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-wearing-facemask-on-the-ground-8044929/

 

What’s in the Box? Deal or No Deal and knowledge

By David Robertson

Deal or No Deal returned to our screens recently. If you haven’t seen it before, the format is extremely simple—there are 22 players, each being assigned a box filled with a random value between 1p and £100,000. One player is picked to take their box (and its unknown value) to the centre, where they begin to reveal the contents of the other players boxes, one by one. Every three boxes, the mysterious Banker phones in with an offer to buy the player’s still-unopened box, offers which can change dramatically as the values of the other boxes are slowly revealed. Essentially, the contestant must gamble the unknown value in their box against the Banker’s offers to gain the highest possible profit. However, to get the maximum possible – £100k – one must both have received the box of that value, and be prepared to go to the very end and say no to the Banker’s every offer along the way.

Originally hosted by Noel Edmonds, the show was relaunched in 2023 with Stephen Mulhern (who looks like an AI combined Ant, Dec and Philip Schofield into a single image). Edmonds has been a TV pioneer since the 1980s, innovating now-common techniques such as audience phone-ins, and, like Mulhern, cut his teeth presenting live children’s TV. It shows – each episode of Deal or No Deal is an hour of crowd-work, the host building a narrative from a random sequence of numbers and whatever the contestant happens to do and say. The narrative of each show is driven by the contestant being obliged to find patterns in a random sequence, and then explain their reasoning.

It’s that which makes the show so interesting as an example of how ordinary people understand knowledge. Traditional epistemologists (philosophers of knowledge) might approach the question in terms of what a contestant can know for certain, or what the optimal way to think the problem through is. However, I’m much more interested in the social epistemological questions about what everyday people do to try to gain knowledge, and what they think they are doing. Answering those might give us a rather different perspective on religious belief.

Any episode of the show is full of examples. The players are constantly getting a “feeling” about boxes. The contestant will often have a sense about whether their box contains a blue (low value) or red (high value) number. Sometimes they may have had a dream about it (perhaps understandable given that they may have in the pool of potential players for weeks before actually being picked). The contestant will also frequently ask other players if they have a feeling about its contents – and it’s very seldom that they will say no. I often wonder where they understand this knowledge as coming from – from themselves, or an external source? That it is typically described as a “feeling” makes it clear that this is sensed knowledge, rather than thought, experienced in the heart rather than the head. That it is often said with the palm of the hand laid against the chest reinforces this impression.

Another example is the sense that the player should “go all the way to the end” with the box they were given – as though there were some purposeful or meaningful connection between them and the contents of the box they were assigned. That they were somehow “chosen”, or that the value reflects themselves in some karmic way.

It’s increasingly common for contestants to talk about “manifesting” a particular result—that is, active visualisation toward a desired outcome. Although such magical thinking has a long history, it was repopularised by Rhonda Byrne’s 2006 bestseller The Secret. Noel Edmunds himself became a prominent advocate for these techniques, publishing his own book Positively Happy: Cosmic Ways to Change Your Life in 2006. It is certainly possible that he encouraged contestants to talk in this way, but nevertheless they have continued to do so with Mulhern.

The contestants will also frequently construct ad hoc rituals. These typically involve family members and friends – for example, certain boxes will be kept until the end because the numbers are a birthday of a sibling or child, or decisions are based on advice given in advance by a grandparent. Although this is often presented as “for luck”, I read it as being more about “meaning”. In many cases, they are people who’ve died, usually (but sadly not always) older people. By incorporating these ancestors in the narrative being constructed, the contestants establish their identity within a larger group of extended family and close friends, becoming a representative of the broader tribe for the purposes of the narrative.

We can see this socialised knowledge too in how the group will spontaneously respond to events in particular ways. One that fascinates me is the way that the collective will respond to a disappointing play (for example, the player revealing the locations of the high-value boxes early in the game) by all repeating “come on”, not in the cheery way of someone encouraging a child flagging in a sports day race, but in a quiet way that seems to mean something closer to “hold the line” or “trust the plan”. The contestant, being seen as the representative of the broader collective, is reassured by that broader collective about the unexpected result and encouraged to continue. I am reminded of Bruno Latour’s argument in Rejoicing that religion is a “mode of being” in which language is used not to carry information but to transform the person hearing it. It’s a collective shoring up of faith, in its most simple meaning of “trust”.

These ad hoc acts and improvised knowledge claims are very much in keeping with those described by scholars of vernacular religion including Leonard Primiano, Martin Stringer and Graham Harvey. For these scholars, our beliefs are not so much an idea that we hold in our head that drives our behaviour, rather they are socially-determined sets of responses to various situations, and in out-of-the-ordinary or stressful situations, our responses can be very different from our everyday responses. These often do not confirm to the kinds of logical or empirical thinking that traditional epistemology has presented as the norm, but they are nevertheless utterly normal, and I would argue, central to understanding human behaviour.

Deal or No Deal gives us an opportunity to observe these processes happening in a framework that isn’t seen as religious by anyone involved. While religious identity continues to drop steadily, non-empirical beliefs and their ritualised expressions remain ubiquitous. As scholars of religion, we could identify these claims to non-empirical knowledge as religious, but I am not sure what the analytical benefit would be. Rather, I prefer the more radical position that these non-empirical knowledges are not uniquely, or even particularly, the domain of religion. Dividing the ways we gain knowledge about the world into science on the one hand, and religion on the other, as we often do, is too simplistic.

The broader point then is that, outside of academia or other contexts where we are brought to consciousness of how we are thinking, our ways of gaining knowledge of the world are messy and complex. Deal or No Deal is perhaps something of an outlier, but I suspect that most of us have made a decision based on a feeling about a person, or object. Maybe you’ve had a physical reaction to a place, or felt that you were being watched. Ideas about ghosts, communication with the dead, of extra-sensory perception and of being able to will things into manifestation are as common, if not more so, than those we more typically identify as religion, and probably always have been. But as yet, we lack the vocabulary for a more nuanced conversation about different kinds of knowledge.

“The most important opportunity for the subject in decades” : The Curriculum and Assessment Review and the future of Religious Education in England

By Stefanie Sinclair

We’re at the cusp of potentially major changes in Religious Education in England. Last month, the Department for Education published the final independent report it commissioned on Building a World-Class Curriculum for All. This strongly recommends that Religious Education should be added to the national curriculum in England to address inconsistencies in the quality of the provision of RE and “prevent further diminishment” of this subject (Curriculum and Assessment Review, 2025, p. 109). Deborah Weston, Chair of the Religious Education Policy Unit for NATRE, the Religious Education Council and RE Today, has described this as “the most important opportunity for the subject in decades” (cited in Kahn-Daniels, 2025).

On the 9th of December at 4.30pm, Deborah Weston will speak at a webinar on’ The Curriculum and Assessment Review and the future of Religious Education in England ‘. This free online event will be hosted by the BASR (British Association for the Study of Religions) and the Open University. It is open to anyone who would like to find out more about the report’s recommendations and their potential impact on the future of RE. In particular, the event will also explore how colleagues at universities and schools can work together to support next steps, join the conversation about future curriculum content and raise the status of the subject. Speakers will also include Rachael Jackson-Royal, Exams and Higher Education Officer at the National Association of Teachers of RE (NATRE) and Head of RE at a large multi-academy trust in Birmingham.

To find out more about this event and register, please click here:

REGISTRATION LINK

BASR webinar:

The Curriculum and Assessment Review and the future of Religious Education in England

9th of December at 4.30-5.30pm

Background

Currently, RE is a basic, compulsory school subject. Its content is not nationally defined, but locally agreed, with independent SACREs (Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education) advising local authorities. The recent Curriculum and Assessment review acknowledges that it is “vital for children and young people to have access to high-quality RE” and stresses the subject’s “important role in children and young people’s intellectual, personal, spiritual, moral, social and cultural development” (Curriculum and Assessment Review, 2025, pp. 106-7). However, it concludes that while “there are undoubtedly pockets of excellent practice […], the evidence suggests that provision for RE in many schools is not good enough and does not prepare pupils adequately for life beyond school” (Curriculum and Assessment Review, 2025, p. 108). While RE remains popular at GCSE, despite not featuring in the EBacc, there are great inconsistencies in the quality of provision, exacerbated by critical shortages of RE subject specialist teachers. These conclusions very much resonate with those of the 2024 Ofsted subject report for RE in England (Ofsted, 2024).

There is widespread agreement across the sector that change is urgently needed. However, in its response to the recommendations of the Curriculum and Assessment Review, the government has stressed how essential it is that “a clear shared position from the sector on the future of RE” is established first (UK Government, 2025, p. 35). Previous attempts at reform (since 1988) did not manage to do so.

However, there are significant factors in place that make the achievement of a shared position a realistic prospect now. The report’s recommendation to add RE to the National Curriculum has been welcomed across the RE subject community, including the executive committees of NATRE, the Religious Education Council in England and Wales (REC) and the Association for University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE) (see: AULRE, 2025; Kahn-Daniels, 2025; REC, 2025).

Furthermore, the REC has already developed a National Content Standard for RE in England (REC, 2023) which is explicitly mentioned in the final report of the Curriculum and Assessment Review as a good foundation for the establishment of a national curriculum for RE (Curriculum and Assessment Review, 2025, p. 109). As a next step, the government has tasked Vanessa Ogden, who led the ‘deep dive’ consultation for RE in the context of the Assessment and Curriculum Review, to set up and convene a task and finish group, aiming to co-create a draft national curriculum for RE by March 2026, building on the REC’s National Content Standard for RE.

If consensus on a draft can indeed be reached, next steps would involve the DfE conducting a formal consultation regarding the details of the content and proposed changes to the legislative framework. This would also include the review’s recommendation to repeal the current requirement that learners between the age of 16 and 18 study RE at school sixth forms.

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New York’s new Mayor-elect and Religion

By Hugh Beattie

In November, New York for the first time ever elected a Muslim Mayor – Zohran Mamdani, who since 2020 has been a member of the New York state legislature. His background is a cosmopolitan one. His mother, Mira Nair, was brought up as a Hindu. She is an internationally-acclaimed Bollywood film director (her best-known film is probably Monsoon Wedding, released  in 2001). His father, Mahmood Mamdani, is an academic who specializes in colonial, anti-colonial and decolonisation studies. His publications include Good Muslim, Bad Muslim (2005) which explores American attitudes to Islam. Mahmood Mamdani comes from a Khoja background. Khojas are members of a trading caste living mainly in western India, Pakistan, Uganda, Europe and the USA. Their ancestors became Muslims in the 14th century CE; today the largest Khoja community is found in Bombay. Most Khojas identify with the minority Nizari Ismaili Muslim tradition, led by Aga Khan V, Shah Rahim al-Husayni. There are also Sunni and Twelver Shi’ite Khojas. Zohran Mamdani (who was born in Uganda and has lived in New York since he was seven) identifies with the Twelver Shi’a Khoja tradition.

Khoja Islam has been characterised as flexible, diverse and tolerant. In many respects Zohran Mamdani’s approach seems to be a liberal one; for example he is a supporter of the LGBTQ+ Community, and  is a hip-hop fan who has composed, performed, and produced rap music. His views on Palestine and Israel, however, have attracted ‘criticism from across the political spectrum’ (Mays, 2025). While a student at Bowdoin College, he helped to found the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. He is also a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which uses non-violent means to try and pressure the Israeli government into recognising Palestinian rights. This has helped to make him a controversial figure who has been condemned by some as an anti-Semite, and accused of calling for the destruction of Israel. It is true that he has described Israel as an apartheid state, criticised American military support for it, and called for New York-based organisations funding Jewish settlements on the West Bank to lose their charitable status. Nevertheless he argues that ‘Israel has a right to exist as a state with equal rights’ for all its citizens, and he has challenged anti-Semitic views and said that, whatever their identity, the killing of civilians is always wrong. He criticised a rally held in New York on October 8 2023 which celebrated Hamas’s actions on October 7, and on the second anniversary of the attack said that on that day Hamas committed a ‘horrific war crime’ (Friedman and Bartov, 2025). During his mayoral campaign Mamdani reached out to New York’s million or so Jews, for example visiting synagogues and engaging with Jewish organisations. Some 30% of the Jewish electorate in the city voted for him (Demir, 2025).

Mamdani has also been accused of being anti-Hindu, mainly because he has been a critic of the Hindu nationalist Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, for what some have called Modi’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies. However, during his mayoral campaign Mamdani also tried to win the support of the substantial Hindu community in New York, for example visiting two Hindu temples during his campaign, and proclaiming that he was ‘proud of [his] … Hindu heritage’ (Dutt 2025). Many Hindus voted for him too.

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Graduation, celebration and songs for all seasons: The Open University awards Steve Roud the Honorary Degree of Doctor of the University.

By Marion Bowman

Last week, during the Open University Graduation Ceremony at the Birmingham Symphony Hall on October 30, I had the enormous pleasure of delivering the Oration in honour of Steve Roud, after which our Chancellor, Baroness Martha Lane-Fox of Soho, presented him with the honorary degree of Doctor of the University.

The Open University has a noble tradition of awarding honorary degrees to individuals recognised for outstanding achievements aligned to the University’s values.  I have often been part of the platform party when we have presented an honorary degree, for instance to Martha Lane Fox in 2011 and to Terry Pratchett in 2013, so it was fascinating to actually participate in this process. Working with Steve’s daughter Kate Faulkner and his longterm academic collaborator Dr Julia Bishop (University of Sheffield), OU ethnomusicologist Professor Byron Dueck and I proposed Steve for the honorary degree; we were delighted that the nomination was successful.

Figure 1. Marion orating while Steve had to stand and listen! Photo by Leslie Currie (2025)

Figure 2. Steve responding to Oration and award. From the smiles, this was the moment he said ‘Indexers don’t get out much!’ Photo by Leslie Currie (2025)

So, what had Steve done to deserve this? Steve spent many years as local studies librarian in Croydon and also served as the honorary librarian of the Folklore Society. However, Steve Roud is best known as the creator of the Roud Indexes: an extraordinarily comprehensive record of traditional English-language folk songs from around the world. His passion for documenting and cataloguing the genre has transformed both scholarly research and popular understanding.

The Folk Song Index records key details of traditional songs in English, and features a comprehensive numbering system, called ‘Roud numbers’, to identify and bring together variants of songs across time and place. This is essential in a field where there are many different renditions of songs and no single, definitive version of them. For instance, clicking on Roud 12 in the Folk Song Index, Scarborough Fair, will take you to 355 entries detailing the song’s different titles and versions, and citing evidence of the song, and its performance, in myriad sources. In relation to Vernacular Religion, you can explore the index for references to ghosts, Wassailing, May Day and other calendar customs.

Because of its size and reach, the Index allows researchers to undertake comparative studies, chart song histories, investigate the role of women as performers, and many other aspects of vernacular culture. The Folk Song Index sits alongside Steve’s Broadside Index, which documents songs in cheap printed formats and early recordings, which are essential to understanding the sources and histories of vernacular song.

The Roud Indexes began life around 1970 on a series of index cards kept in a shoebox and were eventually transferred to Steve’s personal computer. More than 50 years later, there are over three quarters of a million entries, linking thousands of songs, from Australia to the Americas, as well as the British Isles. Today, the Roud Indexes are hosted online by the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at the English Folk Dance and Song Society and are available free of charge. They are an indispensable resource for researchers of all kinds around the world, utilised by academics, practitioners and enthusiasts alike.

Based on his extensive research, Steve has published widely on folk music, including Folk Song In England, a comprehensive history of the subject, highlighting the social context of the songs. With Julia Bishop, Steve created the award-winning New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. In recognition of his outstanding scholarship, Steve has received the Folklore Society’s Coote Lake Medal and has been elected an International Fellow of the American Folklore Society.

As I said in my Oration, the Roud Indexes are ground-breaking resources, democratic and scholarly, comprehensive and co-operative. This ethos resonates powerfully with our own belief at The Open University in the importance of making knowledge inclusive and accessible. It seemed entirely appropriate that the OU should honour Steve’s extraordinary contribution to the history of vernacular song and folk traditions.

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Religion as culture of resistance: ritualised protest inside the British climate movement

by Maria Nita 

Religion and culture – two overlapping categories and concepts – determine how people see the climate crisis. For the 20th-century anthropologist Clifford Geertz, cultures are made up of ‘structures of meanings or meaningful structures that allow participants in the same culture to correctly interpret the words, gestures, activities, or symbols that were part of their own cultural context’ (Geertz, 1973: 7). Therefore, they are important concepts that can help us understand both climate activism as well as its public and media reception.  It has not been too important in my ethnographic work to make a distinction between the terms ‘religion’ and ‘culture’ on the ground, but I aim to use and apply both these concepts, as far as possible, in connection with how the people I interview and observe (often during marches and protest actions) understand them. I suggest that religion could be understood as a culture of resistance in the context of a growing global, transnational climate movement, which can in turn be understood as a meeting place for many different cultures of political resistance. 

 

Religion and culture are encoded into the many different networks that make up the climate movement, particularly through ritualised and performative actions which can include singing, dancing, drumming, acting or chanting. But to what extent are these forms active elements or just inert relics inside the protest repertoire of the climate movement? In other words, to what extent can they be understood to actively shape the movement or do they simply provide a cultural resource to activists? My research (Nita, 2024) suggests that religious traditions have a lot of influence and impact, and that they represent key cultures of resistance inside the British climate movement.  

 

The British climate movement has been strongly influenced by Contemporary Paganism and has become increasingly open to support from and collaboration with other religious traditions, such as Rebel Christians and XR (Extinction rebellion) Buddhists. Despite its initial  opposition to institutionalised and organised  religion, during the 21st century there has been increased acceptance and support for Christian churches and Christian movements and grassroots networks, like the influential Christian Climate Action (CCA) founded in London in 2014 or the Laudato Si Movement, which was launched as a response to the late Pope Francis’ letter with the same name, issued in 2015. Christianity and Contemporary Paganism are not as different as they might appear. Contemporary Paganism – and particularly the Eco-Pagan faction of the movement that developed post 1960s – can be seen in various guises, as a countercultural movement, or even on the edge of the spectrum of new Christian reformulations, that simply benefited from increased cultural visibility  given the decline of institutionalized Christianity in the second half of the 20th century.    

 

In addition, the British climate movement developed new and influential forms of direct-action like the climate camps in the mid-2000s – which have roots in transatlantic models of civil disobedience. Post 1960s, in Britain and the US, new forms of direct action emerged through the commitment of religious and spiritual countercultural movements. In the US, Black churches contributed to the traditions of civil disobedience within the civil rights movement. In the UK, Pagans shaped British green activism, especially in the 1990s and early 2000s (Letcher, 2001; 2002).  Contemporary Paganism is itself a transatlantic movement with roots in the 18th and 19th century Romantic Movement, as well as the British Druid and Celtic revival that took place around this period. During the 1990s Pagans in the UK played an important role in the development of key activist methodologies – such as non-violent direct action (NVDA).  Today NVDA represents the bedrock of British climate activism – contemporary protest actions generally start with some form of NVDA training. The Contemporary Pagan ‘witch camp’ which began as a form of protest in Britain’s forests during the 1990s British anti-road movement became the model of the climate protest camp.  

 

Scholars have argued that religious traditions have a key part to play in supporting wider environmental values and attitudes, both inside religious communities and the wider public sphere. Whilst religious leaders like the late Pope Francis played an important role in raising awareness of the ecological crisis, it is the Laudato Si green movement that had a tangible impact. Moreover, research shows that top-down efforts from religious leaders and eco-theologians have not had an impact on ‘the streets’, for ordinary people, ‘rank and file Christians’ and local churches (Clements, McCright, & Xiao, 2013). In contrast, greening coming from grassroots networks in the UK has been more successful in influencing the churches (Nita, 2016). This is particularly the case with green Christians in largely Protestant/ Anglican contexts, like the UK and the United States, who have been able to develop new religious practices and protest methodologies – such as climate vigils for example.  

  

Green Christians have been using climate vigils to combine political protest with ritualized and performative actions in their varied ‘bottom up’ efforts to reach out to Christian communities and churches, as well as the wider unengaged public. Members of Christian Climate Action led many campaigns of support to the wider climate movement and demanded that the Church disinvested from the fossil fuels industry. We can see an example of such a protest in the image below, where members of Christian Climate Action and other green Christians are protesting outside of the building where the Church of England General Synod was being held in February 2020. As it becomes clear in this image, Green Christians who protest in public spaces ‘face’ both their own Christian communities and the larger public sphere. The protest methodologies activists use in these settings often combine artistic and religious symbolism. In the image below the artistic display that can be seen in the foreground of the picture, represents children’s coffins – the future victims of the climate crisis. During the event participants knelt to make flower offerings as one would do in front of a real memorial. The site became a ritual representation of an uncertain future. Importantly, such actions can be said to have been successful, given that only a few years later, in 2023, the Church Commissioners and the Church of England Pensions Board announced that they would independently disinvest from fossil fuels.  

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Filmmaking and Lego: Workshop exploring creative pedagogies for promoting religious tolerance and diversity in schools

In the face of the recent upsurge of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other forms of prejudice, how can we support young people in building their resilience against hostile voices?

The Open University’s RETOPEA (‘Religious Toleration and Peace’) project team is collaborating with colleagues from the ‘Understanding the Interplay: Worldviews, Education & Lived Citizenship’ project (Universities of London South Bank University and UCL) and  HFL Education to offer a free joint workshop on the 24th of June 2025 at Walton Hall in Milton Keynes. This  will explore ‘Creative pedagogies for promoting religious tolerance and diversity in schools’, including the use of filmmaking and Lego.

This workshop is aimed at head teachers and educational leaders in secondary education, further education and sixth forms as well as at teachers in history, film and media studies, or religious, worldviews and civic education. The workshop is offered free of charge, with financial support from the Culham St Gabriels Trust.

The RETOPEA project aims to support young people’s active learning about religious diversity in the past and present through the creative process of making short documentary-style films (‘docutubes’).​ RETOPEA ​is an international project originally funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (2018-22; Grant Agreement no. 770309). Its educational methods and resources have been piloted across Europe with young people (aged 12-18). From 2023 onwards, further funding from the Culham St. Gabriel’s Trust and The Open University’s Open Societal Challenges programme has allowed the team to test and evaluate RETOPEA resources and methods more extensively in Jordan, Albania and the UK, and the team are currently also exploring their use in primary and home education.

The RETOPEA team have developed a free online course on Young people and religion: creative learning with history, which is available on OpenLearn. This explains how teachers and youth workers can use the ‘docutube method’ in their own teaching. Participants will receive a free statement of participation upon completion.

The team would like to hear from teachers, educational leaders and schools interested in using the docutube method and RETOPEA resources.

To get in touch, find out more about RETOPEA or book your place at the workshop in Milton Keynes on the 24th of June, ​​contact: [email protected], including details of your school, job title and roles held.

Mapping Modern Faith and Human Flourishing – a new research project

By Suzanne Newcombe and Stephen Christopher

The Religious Studies Department at the Open University is excited to be the lead partner on a new grant from the John Templeton Foundation entitled ‘New Religiosity and the Digital Study of Eudaimonia’ (No. 63357), which runs from 2025-2027.

This project will establish an infrastructure that will allow researchers to explore how contemporary religion might promote or hinder well-being. Eudaimonia is a Greek word commonly translated as happiness or welfare. The concept is closely associated with questions of how to live a ‘good’, meaningful, and satisfying life. This was a major consideration of Aristotle’s practical philosophy. Traditionally, religious frameworks aim to provide the beliefs and social structures of providing just such a ‘good life’.

Using the infrastructure of the Database of Religious History at the University of British Columbia in Canada, the project will design a new data entry framework (a ‘poll’) to capture group-level descriptive variables that is fit-for-purpose to capture beliefs and practices in contemporary religious movements.

The ‘New Religiosity Poll’ will incorporate both narrative (qualitative) as well as closed questions which lend themselves to statistical analysis (quantitative). By establishing this data entry structure, we will be able to bring the study of contemporary religious movements into dialogue with the rapidly expanding field of the digital humanities and expanding computing power.

The project will have a particular focus on variables which are associated with human flourishing and well-being.  These questions are likely to relate to things like gratitude, dietary restrictions restricting alcohol or tobacco use, nature of social support networks or encouragement to volunteer for causes within and beyond the structure of the religious movement itself.

Cambridge Central Mosque’s atrium (Cmglee, CC BY-SA 4.0)

We will also look at variables relating to how and to what extent a religious group is accepted by mainstream society in a particular national context or by the greater mainstream tradition to which it claims to be associated. We will also include information on beliefs and practices that might have a negative effect on wellbeing of some people, such as questions about the treatment of former members and the corporal punishment of children.

Svetoary community celebrating Mokosh (Union of Slavic Rodnover Communities, CC BY-SA 4.0)

After we establish this framework, we will enter 400 movements into the new database structure. Half of these entries will be organised by the partner organisation Inform, based in Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College London and half will be commissioned by Dr. Christopher with a focus on engaging scholars and trained expert-insiders from Asia and Africa. Our selection criteria for these groups will capture five broad traditions which have a significant presence from the 1970s onwards and have engaged with rapidly changing media technologies and the increasingly global flows of information and people.

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BASR Annual Conference 2025

The BASR is pleased to be supporting the quinquennial IAHR conference in Krakow this year and we hope to see many of you there. As is our usual custom in an IAHR year, we will be running our annual conference for 2025 over a single day. This year, with thanks to the Open University for hosting, we have also chosen to run the conference online, in the hope that this will be as accessible to as many participants as possible.

We are therefore pleased to announce that the theme for this year’s conference will be, ‘Religion Space and Place’. Our keynote speaker will be Professor Lily Kong, a geographer who has written extensively on religion, with a focus on religion and urban change in Asian cities.

15-minute papers are welcome from all scholars, at any level of experience, on any dimension of

Religion Space and Place, including (but not limited to):

  • Religion and pilgrimage;
  • Religion and nationalism;
  • Religion and populism;
  • Religion and urban transformation;
  • Religion and rural change;
  • Religion, borders and stratification;
  • Religion and tourism;
  • Religion and architecture;
  • Religion and virtual space;
  • Religion, landscape and memory.

Papers are also welcome on any dimension of inter-disciplinary, theoretical or methodological reflection, including (but not limited to)

  • Religious Studies and Geography;
  • Theorising religious space and the places of religion;
  • Feminist, post-colonial or post-humanist approaches to religion, space and place.

Submissions should be sent to [email protected] by June 9 2025.