ISR Co-Sponsors BEIJING SUMMIT and SUMMER INSTITUTE

The Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR) recently partnered with scholars from Peking University, Purdue University, Renmin University, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to organize and sponsor the Beijing Summit on Chinese Spirituality and Society: A Symposium on the Social Scientific Study of Religion. This international conference was held October 8-10,2008 on the campus of Peking University, and was funded with support from the John M. Templeton Foundation. The conference featured new research as well as future prospects for scholarship on religion and spirituality in China. 

TThe Beijing Summit was attended by an impressive group of more than 60 scholars including Tu Weiming, Robert Neville, John Berthrong, Kang Xiaoguang, and Joseph Tamney.  Baylor was well represented at the conference as Carson Mencken, Byron Johnson, Elisa Zhai, and Eric Lui, attended the meeting as did non-resident ISR scholars Philip Jenkins, Gordon Melton, and Fenggang Yang.  Yungfeng Lu, an assistant professor of Sociology at Peking University and former ISR post-doc, played a key role in coordinating the research conference. 

The Summit marked an intriguing development in the increasingly public conversation of religion in China because the meeting was also attended by Chinese governmental officials as well as leaders from major universities throughout China.  According to Dr. Mencken, professor of sociology and director of research at ISR, “the conference provided a unique platform for releasing new data on religion and spirituality in China.”  Mencken is the project director of a 1.7 million dollar ISR grant from the Templeton Foundation to study religion and values in China.  The project also funds a number of post-doctoral fellows from China each year.  Post-docs from China receive training in research methods and statistics in an effort to fast-track new empirical research they will launch as they return to China.

“The experience at Baylor has been invaluable to me and has already had a significant impact on my research productivity as well as my long-term research agenda,” stated Raymond Huang, one of ISR’s current post-doctoral fellows who will soon be returning to Renmin University, where he is an assistant professor of sociology.  “Raymond and other post-docs are completing important but initial studies of religion in China, but more importantly, they will continue to pursue active and ongoing research agendas once they return to China. We play to stay in touch as well as support our post-docs as we see our commitment as a long-term investment and partnership. We are confident this approach will be vital in building a new community of scholars doing ground-breaking research on religion in China,” stated Rodney Stark, co-director of Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion.