Celebrating 25 Years: A Discussion of Religion, Politics, and Culture in the United States in the Last Quarter Century

Center title

Date: Tuesday, October 28th
Time:
3 - 6:30pm
Location:
Yawkey Center,426 Murray Function Room

3 - 4:30pm: How Has the Relationship Between Religion and Politics Changed Over the Past Twenty Five Years?

Kim Daniels, Director, Initiativeon Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, Georgetown University
Jonathan Laurence, Director, Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy, Boston College
Michael Sean Winters, Columnist,National Catholic Reporter; Center for Catholic Studies, Sacred Heart University

4:30 - 5pm: Break (coffee/drinks and light refreshments)

5 - 6:30pm: How Has Religious Practice in the United States Changed in the Last Quarter Century?

David Gibson, Director, Center on Religion and Culture, Fordham University
R. Marie Griffith,
former Director, John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, Washington University in St. Louis
Michael Murphy, Director, The Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage, Loyola University Chicago

Panels Moderated by Mark Massa, S.J.

The Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life will host an afternoon event celebrating the 25th anniversary of the establishmentof the Center at Boston College. The event will be structured around two panel discussions. The first panel discussion(3 to 4:30 pm) will address the question of how the relationship of religion to politics has changed over the past quarter century. The second panel (5 to 6:30 pm) will address the question of how religious practicein the United States has changed in the last 25 years. Both panels will be be comprised of scholars who direct academic centers at other universities analogous to 91ε's Boisi Center.

Headshot of Kim Daniels

Kim Daniels, J.D.,is the director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University. She is a member of the Vatican Dicastery for Communication, and served in the 2021-24 Synod on Synodality as an expert participant, as a member of the Synod Communications Commission, and as the coordinator of one of the ten major Synod study groups, which focuses on the Church's mission in the digital environment. Daniels has served as a consultor to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Religious Liberty, and has advised other Catholic leaders and institutions on a broad range of issues where Church teachings intersect with public life, including immigration, human life and dignity, religious liberty, and care for creation. She is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School and Princeton University.

Headshot of David Gibson

David Gibson,director of Fordham's Center on Religion and Culture, arrived at Fordham University in 2017 after a long career as a religion reporter, author, and filmmaker. He began his journalism career at Vatican Radio in 1986 and after returning to the New York area in 1990 wrote for a variety of newspapers and magazines. He is the author of two books on Catholicism:The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American CatholicismԻThe Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World.

Headshot of R. Marie Griffith

Marie Griffith is the John C. Danforth Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. She served for 12 years (2011-2023) as the director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics and the editor of the Center’s journal,.Her research focuses on American Christianity, including the changing profile of American evangelicals and ongoing conflicts over gender, sexuality, and marriage.

Griffith is the author or editor of seven books.Her latest book,Making the World Over: Confronting Racism, Misogyny, and Xenophobia in U.S. History(UVA Press, 2021), urges a re-reading of the nation’s history that opens up greater complexity than our stock narratives.

Griffith is a frequent media commentator and public speaker on current issues pertaining to religion and politics. She is currently writing the first in-depth comparative history of the clergy sexual abuse crises within American Christianity, focusing on the U.S. Catholic Church and evangelical groups such as the Southern Baptist Convention.

Headshot of Jonathan Laurence

Jonathan Laurence received a B.A.,summa cum laude,from Cornell University, a C.E.P. at Sciences Po, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University. His principal areas of teaching and research are comparative politics and religion and politics in Western Europe, Turkey, and North Africa. Laurence's latest book isCoping with Defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism and the Modern State(Princeton University Press, 2021). Previously,The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims,was published by Princeton University Press in 2012, and received awards for Best Book in religion and politics and migration and citizenship from the American Political Science Association. His first book,Integrating Islam: Religious and Political Challenges in Contemporary France,co-authored with Justin Vaïsse, was published by Brookings Institution Press (2006) and Odile Jacob (2007) and named an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine. Laurence isan affiliate of the Center for European Studies at Harvard. His Ph.D. thesis in political science (Harvard, 2006) was awarded the American Political Science Association's Harold D. Lasswell Prize in 2006, as the best dissertation in public policy completed in 2004 or 2005. He is a former fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, Wissenchaftszentrum Berlin, Transatlantic Academy at the German Marshall Fund, Fafo Institute/Norwegian Research Council, LUISS University-Rome, Sciences Po-Paris and the Brookings Institution (nonresident, 2003-2018).

Headshot of Micharl Murphy

Michael P. Murphy is director of Loyola’s Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage. His research interests are in theology and literature, systematic theology, and the literary/political cultures of Catholicism—but he also thinks and writes about issues in eco-theology, media ecologies, and social ethics. Mikes' first book,A Theology of Criticism: Balthasar, Postmodernism, and the Catholic Imagination(Oxford), was named a "Distinguished Publication" in 2008 by the American Academy of Religion. His most recent scholarly work isTinderizationand Transcendence: Girard, McLuhan, and the Apocalyptic ImaginationinTheological Discourses on Social Media(Routledge, 2025). Mike has appeared on CNN, B91ε, NPR, Fox, and PBS and his shorter pieces have been published in America, NCR, and First Things, among other venues. He is currently at work on a monograph entitledThe Humane Realists: Catholic Fiction, Poetry, and Film 1965-2025.

Headshot of Michael Sean Winters

Michael Sean Winters is a columnist at the National Catholic Reporter. He is also the U.S. correspondent for the Tablet, the London-based international Catholic weekly. He is a fellow at the Center for Catholic Studies at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut. Winters is the author of two books: Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats (2008, Basic Books) and God’s Right Hand: How Jerry Falwell Made God a Republican and Baptized the American Right (2012, Harper One).

Cox, Daniel A. “The Democratic Party’s Transformation: More Diverse, Educated, and Liberal but Less Religious.” The Survey Center on American Life, July 28, 2022.

Haberman, Clyde. “Religion and Right-Wing Politics: How Evangelicals Reshaped Elections.” The New York Times, October 28, 2018. .

Nadeem, Reem. “Modeling the Future of Religion in America.” Pew Research Center, September 13, 2022. /.

Perry, Samuel L. “American Religion in the Era of Increasing Polarization.” Annual Review of Sociology 48, no. 1 (July 2022): 87–107.

Perry, Samuel L., Ryon J. Cobb, Andrew L. Whitehead, and Joshua B. Grubbs. “Divided by Faith (in Christian America): Christian Nationalism, Race, and Divergent Perceptions of Racial Injustice.” Social Forces 101, no. 2 (December 2022): 913–42. .

Witt-Swanson, Lindsey, and Daniel A. Cox. “Faith after the Pandemic: How Covid-19 Changed American Religion.” The Survey Center on American Life, January 12, 2023. .

Lauren Jackson’s article for titled “America Wants a God” discusses the recent pause in a decades-long trend in America towards secularization. Jackson explains that beginning in the 1990s, the population in the United States began a mass exodus from Christianity, with 40 million Americans leaving the church over the last few decades. Up to thirty percent of Americans have identified as having no religion in a trend that many predicted would lead to the end of American Christianity. Jackson notes that this is now changing. She cites a major 2025 Pew Survey that found that secularization is now on pause, with the number of religious believers increasing and people no longer leaving Christianity at the same rate as prior decades. The survey also found that since the pandemic in 2020, the number of people who say they attend religious service weekly has remained consistent at forty percent, with 92% of Americans saying they hold some sort of spiritual belief. These trends are not only noticeable in the general American public, but have also begun to express themselves at the governmental level. More than half of Americans believe that the U.S. should be a Christian nation, and the Supreme Court has had the highest number of pro-religion justices since the 1950s. This sudden shift in religiosity has stunned scholars as they attempt to explain this change. Jackson posits that the turn to religion may be caused by a lack of plausible alternatives to organized religion. When Americans originally turned away from religion, many turned to forms of spirituality; however, the pandemic seemed to awaken many Americans to their dissatisfaction with individualized spiritual expression, sparking a return to religious communities. One-quarter of Americans reported that the pandemic strengthened their faith, which appears to be the beginning of a new demand for religion in U.S. society. At the 25th Anniversary event, leaders from centers at various universities dedicated to exploring religion and American life will join us to discuss how the relationship between religion and politics has changed over the past quarter century.

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