Religion is all around us – it permeates our culture and shapes our understanding of ourselves, the societies around us, and politics both local and global. Understanding the social meaning and influence of religion is key to a wider understanding of social life.
Assistant Professor Miray Philips is a recent addition to the UTSC Sociology faculty, and will be teaching SOC50H3 – Sociology of Religion next semester. The course will examine theoretical paradigms on the meaning of religion and the social implications of religious transformations across time.
“Religion is sometimes a taboo issue in secular spaces, but at the same time, religion is everywhere,” says Dr. Philips. “Religion shapes global politics. We're constantly talking about religious conflict or religious nationalism. Regardless of what an individual person believes about an idea of a divinity, a God, we should know more about religion and how it operates from a sociological perspective.”
A sociologist of religion focusing on the United States and the Middle East, Dr. Philips’ research explores the transnational politics, meaning, and memory of violence and suffering and how religion and rights shape interpretations of violence and chart trajectories for mobilization. Her recent work has focused on the concept of martyrdom among Coptic Christians.
“My interest stems from my personal trajectory,” Dr. Philips explains. “I grew up in a Coptic family. I was born in Egypt and raised in Kuwait, so a lot of the questions I initially had in my research project stemmed from things I had been thinking and struggling with for a really long time.”
Copts make up 10 percent of the population in Egypt, the largest religious minority in that country. They also face discrimination and violence. Acts of sectarian violence against Copts are on the rise in Egypt, including the infamous 2017 Palm Sunday Bombings in Alexandria which killed 45 people and injured 126 others.
“I initially started off asking: what does martyrdom mean for Copts?” Dr. Philips says. “What currency does it have politically? Why does the church advance it? But also, what does suffering mean? Or what does a perpetual sense of discrimination or persecution mean, and how does that then impact ideas about civic engagement? Should people take to the streets? Should they pray? Should they accept suffering and martyrdom?”
Dr. Philips initially started off exploring these questions during field work in Egypt and amongst Copts in Kuwait and the United States. Gradually, the scope of the project began expanding and ended up forming the basis of her PhD dissertation, which aimed to understand more broadly how different advocacy groups mobilize around the Coptic Question, which is more broadly related to questions of authoritarianism and terrorism.
While still writing her PhD, Dr. Philips won a clutch of best student paper awards for her paper entitled (Mis-) Representing Christian Persecution: On the Political Misuses of Quantification in Advocacy, from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the Association for the Sociology of Religion, and the American Sociological Association. This paper explores how international religious freedom actors claim that Christians are the most persecuted religious group worldwide despite data not substantiating that claim.
Dr. Philips’ current book project, The Transnational Politics of Religious Difference, explores the impact of geopolitics on meaning-making struggles about the plight of Christians in the Middle East. In particular, it examines how the concept of religious freedom is politicized by various groups. One of the topics examined in the book is how the Christian religious right in the West have mobilized around an idea of suffering Christian kin in the Middle East.
“The book is about the geopolitical debates about Christians in the Middle East, says Dr. Philips. “I'm trying to understand how the polarization of religious freedom, in the context of rising authoritarianism and right-wing Christian activism, impacts advocacy related to religious freedom and human rights. While religious freedom is misused by certain governments, religious freedom is still a tool used by religious minorities to advocate for their plight.”
Dr. Philips will cover some of these issues in her upcoming course. She concludes: “Regardless of what your views are on religion are, it’s very important to understand the role that religion plays in the world.”