Reckoning with God

Abstract This special section reflects upon how divine-human relations are shaped by the socioeconomic and political circumstances in which they are cultivated. The four articles treat God not as a rigidly defined, unchanging being borne of ageless scripture and theology, but a figure who emerges during people's self-reflection and through their interactions with others in specific settings. The articles explore how human engagements with the divine manifest across a myriad of post–Arab Spring communities, from Syrian Sunni refugees in Jordan to Shi'i Iranians who feel forsaken by their government and God, and from Beiruti Orthodox Christians running a charity clinic to Sunni Muslim women taking Islamic lessons in Dubai. A framework of divine-human relations structures these distinct contributions, and this introduction lays out how the articles intervene in debates around politics, agency, and temporality. Together, the articles offer insight not only into what religiosity and selfhood look like among (dis)believers in the Middle East today, but also what notions of God drive different kinds of (ir)reverence. They also accord ethnographic attention to God, an otherwise marginal figure in much scholarship on religion.