Saved by a Martyr: Mediation, Evangelical Sanctification, and the “Persecuted Church”
The Religion and Politics in American Public Life lecture series, co-coordinated for 2014-15 by Professors Courtney Bender, Jean Cohen, Josef Sorett, and John Torpey, is a series of public conversations that explore the often contentious role of religion in American political and public life. Each session features a speaker presenting on a timely, topical intersection of religion with American politics and society, such as civil religion, public discourses of morality, and reproductive and sexual rights.
The series is jointly sponsored by the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life; the PhD Program in Sociology at the Graduate Center, CUNY; the Department of Political Science at Columbia University; and the Department of Religion at Columbia University.
For a list of previous speakers and topics, see ircpl.org/americanpubliclife. All talks in this series are free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. Email info@ircpl.org with any questions.
Omri Elisha is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Queens College, CUNY. He has been a Resident Scholar at the School for Advanced Research, a Mellon Fellow at the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, and a member of the Young Scholars in American Religion workshop at the Center for Religion and American Culture in Indianapolis. In 2009, he was awarded the Society for Cultural Anthropology’s Cultural Horizons Prize for his article in Cultural Anthropology entitled "Moral Ambitions of Grace." Elisha’s first book, Moral Ambition: Mobilization and Social Outreach in Evangelical Megachurches (University of California, 2011) examines the aspirations and frustrations of socially engaged evangelicals affiliated with megachurches and faith-based organizations in East Tennessee, and the historical, cultural, institutional factors that both fuel and constrain their efforts to promote evangelistic ministries focused on issues of social welfare and urban renewal. His current work explores the uses of the performing arts in charismatic ministries of worship and spiritual warfare.