Editorial Introduction

This, the 15th edition of DISKUS, arises from the annual conference of the British Association for the Study of Religions that took place 5-7 September 2012 at the University of Winchester. The theme of the conference was ‘Borders, Boundaries and Transgressions: within and between religions’. The many excellent papers presented at the conference engaged with the theme in diverse ways, as indicated by the papers included here, which also highlight the international connections of the BASR conference, both in terms of content and presenters. ‘Religious Emotions and Religious Peacebuilding: The Case of Bojayá (Colombia)’, by Sandra Rios of Aberdeen University, broadens the concept of ‘religious peacebuilding’ by introducing aspects of religious emotions and social memory in her sociological study of the 2002 massacre at a Catholic church. The paper by Nour Farra-Haddad of Saint Joseph University, ‘Dismantling Religious Boundaries by Sharing the Baraka through Pilgrimages in Lebanon’, gives an account of Muslim and Christian activities at the shrines of popular saints and prophets, showing a high degree of ‘porousness’ between putatively different religions.

It is also a pleasure to include the keynote address by Douglas Pratt of the University of Waikato in New Zealand and currently President of the Australian Association for the Study of Religions (AASR). His paper on ‘Exclusivist Boundaries and Extremist Transgressions: Persistence and Problems of Religion’ sparked lively discussion at the conference as it outlined a model for understanding the nature of the ‘persistence of religion’ by looking at the problem of exclusivism and extremism. 

Many thanks to the BASR president, Graham Harvey, for continued support during the handing-over of DISKUS to myself, the new coordinating editor.

Suzanne Owen