Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion Podcast · Profs. Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst and Megan Goodwin

CROSSOVER: Turn the Page with Jenn Jordan

·43 min·2 clips

"The title is a threat. It is a warning. It is a red flag." Why religion stays relevant to non-religious people.

1. Keeping It 101 airs a crossover interview from the Syosset Public Library's Turn the Page podcast about the book Religion Is Not Done With You, whose subtitle concerns maps, power and law. 2. Megan Goodwin studies American religions, race, gender and politics, and Elise Morgenstein-First is a University of Vermont professor of Islam, race and racialization in South Asia, with Jenn Jordan interviewing. 3. The central claim is that the title "is a threat": religion shapes law, time and institutions even for people who consider themselves non-religious. 4. The two met in 2007 when Morgenstein-First was randomly assigned Goodwin's floor during a UNC Chapel Hill PhD visit, and they launched the podcast in January 2020 as a planned five-episode project pitched as "tea and crackers." 5. They describe how Goodwin's U.S. focus on religious intolerance, white supremacy and "cult" labeling (including the FLDS, the Satanic Panic and the MOVE bombing) combines with Morgenstein-First's global focus on British-ruled South Asia, jihad and imperial law. 6. Morgenstein-First, who calls herself "the calendar lady," argues that university religious-holiday policies are inherently racist because students must out themselves to get days off, and she tells of standing on a desk in Mrs. Connor's kindergarten class over Santas or trees. 7. Goodwin ties unexamined religion to real harm, citing a Catholic supermajority on the Supreme Court, limits on health care access, and the Court calling crosses an American cultural symbol, while stressing that there is "no civil rights movement without religion." 8. Goodwin introduces "anastrophic politics," in which laws are turned against their original purpose, and gives the example of anti-Ku Klux Klan anti-masking laws now used against anti-fascist protesters and Muslim women who cover. 9. On tone, Morgenstein-First says a chapter took nine or ten drafts to get right, and Goodwin quotes Mariam Kaba's "hope is a discipline" and calls the book "a very serious joke" in the spirit of the drag queen Alaska. 10. Suits readers of religion, race and U.S. politics who want humor with academic rigor.

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