Throughout his professional career, Jonathan VanAntwerpen has achieved so much, and one of them is the introduction of “The Immanent Frame.” Hundreds of social studies and humanities authors have published their original articles on this digital platform that was initially formed for the publications of interdisciplinary studies. These publications included secularism, public circles, and religion.
The philosophy behind the formation of this platform was the sharing of knowledge regarding secularism, religion, and the public sphere. Moreover, this platform was formed by Jonathan VanAntwerpen and his team in 2007. At that time, he was serving as the director of SSRC and the team leader; moreover, he served as editor-in-chief for many years.
In 208, this digital platform received the honor of “favorite new religion site, egghead division”, but the Revealer in the 12th annual Webby Awards. To bring innovation, the immanent frame partnered with killing the Buddha to introduce “Frequencies”, and the new project was also named an official honoree by Webby awards in their 16th annual gathering.
Furthermore, “The Immanent Forum’s” recent versions include “Nature and normativity: New inquiries into the natural world, Modernity’s resonances: New inquiries into the secular, and Anti Blackness as religion: Black living, Black dying, and Covid-19.”
More about Jonathan Van Antwerpen’s The Immanent Frame
At the time of its formation Jonathan VanAntwerpen and his team aimed for a platform where people from different backgrounds could share knowledge regarding religion, secularism, and the public sphere. At that time, some people defined it as a blogging site because blogging at that time was more famous than today.
The immanent frame was primarily intended as an experimental site where authors were allowed to publish articles on the said topics and positively criticize each other. According to various sources, Jonathan VanAntwerpen and his team launched this forum when there were around 6 million blogs on the internet. Most of them were interconnected and formed setups for facilitating the propagation and scattering of ideas.
Among another purpose, one core purpose of this platform was to offer a forum for people to express themselves and their knowledge, understandings, and ideologies regarding religion, secularism, and the public sphere; moreover, participants were expected to be open-minded and open to criticism because this platform was meant for sharing knowledge and understanding various aspects of life and people from different walks of life.
So if we look at it from this sense, this digital platform resembles other collaborative ventures and blogs, now called the blogosphere.
VanAntwerpen strategy for the immanent frame
Conferring to the statement given by Jonathan VanAntwerpen, the basic idea behind the success of their immanent framework was disagreeing respectfully and being open-minded to criticism. The editorial team, where VanAntwerpen was chief editor, was not primarily focused on safeguarding or gatekeeping but aimed to establish an online community with meaningful offline connections.
In a statement, he accepted that all the information they received for publication on the platforms could not be published, but still, they strived harder to increase the number of people the platform featured.
Furthermore, he said it was a great experience because he had the opportunity to come across different writing styles, ideologies, and creativities. The demand for the immanent frame was apparent when he witnessed so many authors from different walks of life were willing to publish their articles.
