What are the consequences of the increasing salience of “spirituality” in American civic and political life? Do actors and groups publicly identified as spiritual challenge commonly held understandings of social and political involvement? This conference explores the institutions and traditions that construct spiritual activities and identities, and it considers their relations to systems and patterns of political participation and public engagement in the contemporary United States.

Panelists and respondents include: Nancy Ammerman (Boston University), Courtney Bender (Columbia University), Philip Gorski (Yale University), David Kyuman Kim (Connecticut College), Pamela Klassen (University of Toronto), Ruth Marshall (University of Toronto), Elizabeth McAlister (Wesleyan University),Omar McRoberts (University of Chicago), John Lardas Modern (Franklin and Marshall College), Joel Robbins (University of California, San Diego), and Josef Sorett (Columbia University).

For more information, or to RSVP, contact Charles Gelman, at gelman@ssrc.org.

View the conference schedule [PDF].

Papers presentations include:

“Politics, Identity, and Theology: The Forging of Muslim Youth Identities between the Public and the Private”
Arshad Ali, Teachers College, Columbia University

“The Soul-Killing System: J. Gresham Machen’s Critique of Progressive Reform”
Finbarr Curtis, University of Alabama

“Informatic Cosmologies: NBIC, Singularity and the Conscious Universe”
Abou Farman, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

“A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste: Arthur Fletcher, Spirituality, and the American Underclass”
David Hamilton Golland, Bronx Community College, City University of New York

“Free the Jena Six! Black Technospiritual Practices and Racial Justice in the Digital Age”
Stephanie Greenlea, Yale University

“Enchanted Entrepreneurs: The Mediated Labor of Psychics in New York City”
Karen Gregory, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

“A Revolutionary Spirit: Cesar Chavez in Religious Politics”
Luis Léon, University of Denver

“Pragmatic Engagements, Transcendent Orientations: An Ethnographic Study of the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence”
Ian Lowrie, Rice University

“Sex, Lies, and Buddhism: Buddhism in the American Media Imagination”
Scott Mitchell, Institute of Buddhist Studies

“From ‘Rules’ to ‘Relationship’: The Spiritual Faith and Political Passions of American Evangelicals”
Sophie Statzel, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

The Conference on Spirituality, Political Engagement, and Public Life is sponsored by the Social Science Research Council, with the support of the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life, Columbia University, and the generous support of the Ford Foundation.