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Volume 40, Number 3                                                                                                           Spring 2006

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The 2006 ASR preliminary program is now on our Web site: www.sociologyofreligion.com. If you lack Web access, hence need a paper copy, or you have Web access and would like a searchable Word file emailed to you, contact the Executive Office. It is an exciting program, and I hope you will attend. We have several sessions specifically directed toward students (see especially the mentoring session, K1, which requires preregistration) as well as outstanding thematic presentations featuring colleagues from around the world. Now it is time to respond by completing your preregistration materials.

Your preregistration entitles you to save money and also is of enormous assistance to us in making adequate plans for the meeting to serve everyone most effectively. Preregistration requirements will be strictly enforced, both in terms of program participation and charges. Try to firm up your plans in the next few days, and send in your materials.

Please note, in particular, the following:

Our meeting preregistration form is part of this mailing. Information concerning our hotel is also contained here. The hotel will not be using forms, so you must work from this newsletter when making your reservation, either online or by phone. You are urged to ask for a written confirmation, if you make your reservation by phone. The online service allows you to generate your own confirmation immediately.

Note, too, that you may pay 2007 dues at this time, using the preregistration form, even if you are not attending the meeting. If you choose this option, make sure you put your name on the form!

Most of you will probably choose to fly directly to Montréal, to which a wide number of airlines provide direct service from major US cities as well as several in Europe (most notably London and Paris). You would do well to check various discount air travel sites to see which possible alternative routes, including air-rail connections would provide you the most economical and convenient service. Another alternative is to fly to Burlington, Vermont or Albany, New York and pick up a car. (Albany is the closest Southwest Airlines service, hence most competitive.) This may be an especially attractive option for persons from the US who wish to combine the meeting with touring. Direct rail service is also available from New York City and on the Boston-Chicago route, with a change in Albany. Bus service is another possibility. For local directions, see the hotel material below.

Please note the following, both as you use the material in this newsletter and make your plans in general: Hotel rates and the preconference tour are quoted in Canadian dollars. ASR rates are in US dollars. All charges against credit cards by ASR will be in US dollars, and all checks payable to ASR must be in US dollars drawn against US dollar accounts. Simply writing "US dollars" on a check is not acceptable. Money orders in US dollars are also acceptable. We will accept both Canadian and US cash payments at the meeting itself, taking the then current exchange into account.

We are based at the Hyatt Regency Montréal. This is an exceptionally well-situated hotel, and has the shortest tunnel connection to the Palais de Congrés, site of all the ASA sessions. Please note that this year we begin on a Thursday, the 10th, the ASA Religion Section day is the 11th. Our block holds through the ASA meetings, so if you have interests or commitments later in the ASA meetings, you do not have to change hotels to participate in both meetings.

The deadline for hotel reservations is 8 July. It is later than the preregistration deadline, but only a limited number of rooms are available, so reserving early is in your best interest. If you have difficulty making reservations with the hotel before the deadline, please contact the Executive Office at once (309-932-2727; <bill4329@hotmail.com>). After the deadline, there’s not a lot we can do to help you.

It is important that you stay at the ASR hotel. In 2003 we paid extra hotel charges due to lack of adequate hotel registration on the part of our meeting attendees—in spite of having the largest meeting registration in our history! For a further explanation of how this works, go to www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/ m/23/m/178, and simply plug in ASR for SSSP.

Here's how you make reservations: Go to the hotel Website—www.hyatt.com. When you get there, enter the dates you want and the number in your room. Then enter the promotional code G-ASRE. You should get a screen that gives you a base rate of C$179/night, single or double. Check your accommodation preferences and make your credit arrangements. When you are done, you can print a copy of your package. If you prefer to phone, the number of the hotel is 514-982-1234 or 1-800-361-8234. Make sure you get a confirmation number, write it down, and don't lose it.

Getting to the hotel: The hotel Website also provides a downtown map and driving directions into the city. In addition, on the left of the screen, you will see a drop-down column that includes the option "Transportation." This will explain the options for getting in from the airport if you are not getting a car. Cab and limousine are obvious. The airport transporter is L'Aérobus. This is not entirely clear on the hotel Web site as the é character translates into jibberish, but the information is correct, once you make the spelling change. Also the airport is now named Trudeau, not Dorval, as it appears in some of the driving directions (but the driving directions from Dorval are the correct ones for Trudeau). The rail station is about four blocks from the hotel and can be easily walked with light luggage. Ah, the tangled Webs we weave!

Our registration desk will be open Wednesday from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., Thursday and Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.; Saturday from 8:00 to 1:00. We should be able to have the book exhibit open daily from noon Thursday, with pick up of purchases Saturday from 8:15 to 10:15, and the final sale from 10:15 ’til noon. Doublecheck when you arrive! Also, plan to join Council for the opening reception on Wednesday night. Further details of that event will be included with your preregistration confirmation. You can still have a book included in the book exhibit if you will send author, title, and full publisher address to the Executive Office by 8 June.

ASR will try to provide overhead projectors on an as needed basis. We will be contacting presenters via email in mid-June to assess these needs. If you need an overhead and will be away from your email during June, alert us before you go! In general, overhead projectors are provided when they are necessary to present materials in a way that it is not reasonably possible to do through printed handouts. These are standard overhead projectors, using transparencies, not powerpoint. The ASR does not provide other audiovisual equipment. You must either bring your own or make arrangements with the hotel’s a/v service provider, for which contact the ASR Executive Office.

Martin Geoffroy, who has been our point-person for things Canadian has arranged for a preconference walking tour of The Oratory of St. Joseph, to leave from our hotel at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, with an expected return prior to 4:00, hence in plenty of time to attend the Council meeting at 5:00, for those who have that obligation. If you are coming into the city early, either for Council or because of travel schedules, this is an excellent way to start your visit. Martin will meet you at the hotel. There will be a professional guide at the Oratory. Then Martin will bring you back again. Transportation will be via the Montréal subway system. The cost is C$10, cash only, payable at the start of the tour. Reservations are required, and the group must consist of a minimum of 15 and a maximum of 25.

"Situated on beautiful Mount Royal in the city of Montréal, Saint Joseph’s Oratory celebrated its hundredth birthday in 2004. With 2.5 million visitors a year, it is the most popular pilgrimage site in the province of Québec and one of the most popular in the world. What started with the inauguration of a small chapel dedicated to Saint Joseph and the healing ministries of ‘Brother André’ in 1904 has become one of the major tourist attractions of the city of Montréal ... even for nonbelievers. [While] many heritage churches and monasteries have disappeared or are now in serious jeopardy in Québec ..., the site of Saint Joseph’s Oratory keeps expanding. An ambitious program of renovation and expansion of the site started in 2005 and should be completed by 2008." Brother André was a lay brother of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, who manifested charismatic gifts of healing associated with oils he left overnight before a statue of St. Joseph. This work continued and grew up to and through the time of his death in 1937, after which he was entombed in the crypt of a new basilica that was completed in the 1940s. Today it serves not only multifaith pilgrims and secular tourists, but also has come to be a site for public events as a result of "its cultural significance in Québec history," as for example the site for the premier of the Millennium Symphony in 2000, before a crowd of 40,000: "Beyond the purely aesthetic dimension of the work, a more symbolic dimension mixing history, art and religion was omnipresent. Being a major component of the work, the use of the sacred conferred an air of uniqueness in which the qualities of a collective experience, amplified by the media, was brought to the fore." (Quotes from Geoffroy and Vaillancourt in On the Road ... [see below])

If you sign up for the tour and subsequently cannot attend, please contact the Executive Office immediately, as the upper limit to the number of attendees may otherwise exclude someone who wishes to attend. We will also inform registrants if there is an inadequate number for the tour to "go."

We have reasonable expectation that volume 12 of our "Religion and the Social Order" series, On the Road to Being There: Studies in Pilgrimage and Tourism in Late Modernity, will be available at the meeting. A number of the chapters in this volume were presented at last year’s meeting. Others come from the work of Fichter grantees. The sessions on the history of the sociology of religion at this year’s meeting are expected to provide the core for next year’s volume in the series.

The series is now being published by the Brill publishing house of Leiden, the Netherlands. The ASR members’ price is $29 (plus postage) You may purchase this volume now, in advance, and have it shipped to you in late August. Because of the customs situation re Canada, we cannot guarantee copies will be available for purchase at the meeting itself. The members’ price will continue through the membership renewal period this winter, so you will have another chance to purchase a copy at the time you renew your membership. This is a very attractive price for a volume of this quality. Later we will also try to send you a form to pass to your library for inclusion in its collection, as we did last year. Library purchases of these volumes are extremely important to the long-term success of this series at least to ensure that individual copies are purchased as they appear—even better, to create a standing order.

As many of you are aware, the decision of ASA to move this year’s meeting to Montréal was a late one. It caused various confusions within ASA, some of which spilled over into our own meeting planning. We think those kinks have all been worked out, albeit making program notices a bit late. ASA at this point "assures" us that there are no similar issues raging for them re 2007 and 2008, which will be in Manhattan and Boston respectively. We have just learned that the 2009 meeting will be in San Francisco. As of this writing, we have no further arrangements for that in place. You may want to make a note somewhere that the Boston dates are quite early: our first day will be the last day of July!

The British Association for the Study of Religions will meet 4-5 September at Bath Spa Univer-sity. Contact Marion Bowman at m.i.bowman@open.ac.uk.

The RRA and SSSR will meet 19-22 October in Portland, Oregon. Presidents Dan Olson and Donald Miller are both ASR members, and both will deliver presidential address this year. For further information go to www.sssrweb.org. The RRA theme is "Congregations, Denominations and Research on Religion: Promoting Cooperation." The SSSR theme is "Religion v. Spirituality? Assessing the Relationship between Institutional Religious Involvement and Personal Religious Experience."

The American Academy of Religion will meet 18-21 November in Washington, DC. See www.aarweb.org.