Holy Waters: An Interdisciplinary Examination of Religion and Alcohol

The contributors on this panel look at a wide range of examples from many traditions with varying approaches to alcohol studies to supply the discourse on religion and alcohol with a religious studies perspective. The contributors look to many places we can see “religion” and “alcohol” intersect. The panel includes contributions on a variety of religious traditions as well as the “not-religion”. The panel is based on the forthcoming (Routledge) volume that spans historical and geospatial contexts from Ancient Israel to contemporary Nigeria, topics from the uses of alcohol in cultural festivals to the uses of religious imagery in modern marketing of alcoholic products, and methodologies from ethnography to scriptural analysis. The panel will demonstrate the ways religion and alcohol are used to create boundaries that form group identities, reject and subvert dominant imperial powers, and other ways religion and alcohol are used to construct social formations and identities.