The Council of Societies
for the Study of Religion

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About the CSSR

The Council of Societies for the Study of Religion is a federation of learned societies in the field of religious studies. Individuals do not join the Council directly, but apply for membership in one of the Council's constituent societies. The societies seek to further scholarship, research, and teaching in their particular areas and concern themselves with the needs and interests of their members.

The Council meets annually to further aims common to its constituent societies and to contribute to the specific aims of each. The various committees of the Council address themselves to concerns confronting departments and programs of religious studies and the field as a whole.

A number of individuals belong to more than one society and thus receive the publications and participate in the projects of all the societies in which they hold membership. Persons who do not wish to become members of any society may, however, subscribe to the society's publications.

The Council carries out the major business functions for many of its societies, maintaining membership and subscriber files and processing orders for publication.

The CSSR aims to be a council of societies and not another society in itself. As a council, CSSR finds itself in an excellent position to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas, especially among the officers of the member societies, at its annual meeting. On such occasions, it is deemed important that discussion and debate be devoted to matters affecting the field as a while, and not be the sort that would be better carried out within one or another of the constituent societies.

With a broadened membership, CSSR seeks to be increasingly inclusive of the scholarly bodies in religion in North America. As former chair Claude Welch put it, CSSR seeks to render the service of holding up that larger canvas on which each of us paints a particular part of a single picture.

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