How God Works: The Science Behind Spirituality

In conversations about women’s rights, religion and feminism are often cast as incompatible. But religious women tend to see it differently. 
In this episode, we’ll explore how religious women around the world are defining what liberation looks like on their own terms, and ask what we can all learn from their efforts, regardless of what we believe. We’ll talk to writer and lawyer Dania Suleman about how women of faith are defending their religious freedom in secular spaces while also challenging gender inequality within their own communities. And we’ll talk to Dr. Dianne Stewart about African heritage religions, where women have often held spiritual authority in ways that challenge familiar assumptions about gender and hierarchy.
Dania Suleman is the author of A Different Cloth: Reimagining Faith and Feminism. 
Dr. Dianne Stewart is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Emory University, and the author of Obeah, Orisa, and Religious Identity in Trinidad, Volume II, Orisa. Learn more about her work, and her many other publications, at her website.
Also mentioned this episode:
Asma Lamrabet is the author of Women in the Qur’an: An Emancipatory Reading. Learn more about her work on her website. 
Learn more about Hind Makki’s Side Entrance Project here. 
Chandra Talpade Mohanty is the author of the essay “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses”

About 70% of all Americans consider themselves spiritual in some way, whether it be a belief in the soul, spirits or just the idea that something's going on beyond the natural world and what science can prove. But that doesn't mean they're ordering off the menu of organized religion. 
In this episode, we’ll talk to religion professor Liz Bucar, about this “spiritual salad bar” approach: where people pick and choose ingredients from various religions. What’s lost if we take these traditions out of their intended context?  And could it even be causing harm? 
We’ll explore this through the lens of yoga - practiced by one in every six Americans alive today.
Practicing yoga regularly does have proven health benefits, but it’s rooted in a much deeper spiritual and religious tradition that many people aren’t even aware of. With Liz, we’ll explore how restoring some religion to secular or new age spiritual practices can make them more ethical, meaningful and effective.
Liz Bucar is a professor of religion at Northeastern University. She is the author of four books and her writing, teaching, and public lectures cover a wide range of topics but generally focus on how a deeper understanding of religious difference can change our sense of what is right and good. She is the author of the forthcoming book Beyond Wellness, which you can pre-order here. Learn more about her work on her website.

Join us for Season 10 of How God Works, starting next week!

We’ll be back on March 15 with an all-new season of How God Works! In the meantime, we’re excited to share one of our favorite episodes — our very first live event.
If you ask people what they think about religion, you often get one of two answers: Religion is the source of war, violence, abuse, and hypocrisy OR a route to love, kindness, tolerance, and mercy.
Put another way, it’s either what divides us or it’s the thing that can actually bring us together. In a country deeply divided over social, political, and moral issues that seems to be moving further apart by the day, the answer’s not likely to be a simple one. 
How God Works held its first live event in December to explore just that. Why does something that has the potential to connect us so deeply also have the ability to divide us so profoundly? And, regardless of what we believe, is there something we can learn from what religion gets right to find a way to come together?
In a wide-ranging and often moving discussion, Dave spoke to a panel of leading spiritual thinkers and social scientists who have experienced both sides of the issue, including Central Synagogue Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, award-winning author and Christian Historian Diana Butler Bass, The University of North Carolina’s Deepest Beliefs Lab director Kurt Gray, and The Aspen Institute’s Religion and Society Program’s executive director Simran Jeet Singh.

A brand-new season of How God Works returns March 15! In the meantime, we’re revisiting a powerful episode from our archive that feels particularly relevant today. 
Anger, loneliness, and despair are hitting record levels in the US. Our social and political fabrics are fraying. Is the turn away from religion in the US part of the problem? And if so, might a spiritual renaissance (even among the secular left) help us find new ways to flourish? Join Dave as he talks with podcast host Krista Tippett and US Senator Chris Murphy about the role spirituality (or the lack thereof) plays in our individual and societal wellbeing.
Krista Tippett is the host of the acclaimed podcast and radio show On Being. Learn more about the On Being Project’s work in the world here, and be sure to check out their YouTube channel for a rich selection of inspiring and informative videos.
Chris Murphy is a U.S. Senator representing the State of Connecticut. Learn more about his work on his website, and read his column on the need for a spiritual revival among the political left here.