The Irish Theological Quarterly & Maynooth University Department of Sociology Presents "The Liquidation of the Church".

Dr. Kees de Groot Assistant Professor from the School of Catholic Theology,Tilburg University, Netherlands will speak at 5pm on Tuesday 13th February 2018, in Renehan Hall, St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

Is religion dying out in Western societies? Is personal spirituality taking its place? Both stories are inadequate. Institutional religion is not simply coming to an end in Western societies. Rather, its assets and properties are redistributed: large parts of the church have gone into liquidation. The metaphor of liquidation provides an alternative to approaches that merely perceive the decline of religion or a spiritual revolution. Religion is becoming liquid. By examining a number of case studies in the Netherlands and beyond, including World Youth Day, television, spiritual centers, chaplaincy, mental healthcare, museums and theatre, this presentation develops a fresh way to look at religion in late modernity and produces new questions for theological and sociological debate. Dr. Kees de Groot is the author of academic works on a wide variety of topics including Catholic social teaching, religion in popular culture, and spiritual care. His latest book, which is the subject of this talk, is The Liquidation of the Church (Routledge, 2017). He serves on the editorial board of Religie & Samenleving. He is visiting Maynooth under the ERASMUS+ programme.

For further details, please contact brian.conway@mu.ie