“Public Health, Poverty, and Patristics”

Susan Holman, Senior Writer at the Harvard Global Health Institute, will be speaking Tuesday, April 9th as part of the Religions and Public Life speaker series.

Holman is engaged in projects at HGHI that range from curricular development to strategic planning, faculty leadership initiatives, and website news and stories. She has more than 10 years experience in research writing and editing in public and global health, with degrees from Brown University (PhD), Harvard Divinity School (MTS), and Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy (MS). Prior to joining HGHI in 2011, Susan was consultant writer and editor for Partners In Health, academic writer and editor at the Harvard University FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard School of Public Health, and medical writer for Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Susan is an invited scholar internationally on faith-based responses to poverty and global health, and has taught maternal and child health as a public health nutritionist and registered dietitian (RD) at the South End Community Health Center and Joslin Diabetes Center.

The Religions and Public Life initiative is sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Divinity School, and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.

April 9, 5:30 pm
Westbrook Building room 0014

Peter van der Veer, Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity at Göttingen, will be speaking March 26th at 5:30 pm as part of the Religions and Public Life speaker series.

Van der Veer works on religion and nationalism in Asia and Europe. He has just finished a monograph on the comparative study of religion and nationalism in India and China. He taught previously at the Free University in Amsterdam, at Utrecht University and at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1992 he was appointed as Professor of Comparative Religion and Founding Director of the Research Center in Religion and Society in the Social Science Faculty of the University of Amsterdam. He served as Dean of the Social Science Faculty and as Dean of the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research at Amsterdam, and as Director of the International Institute for the Study of Islam and Chairman of the Board of the International Institute for Asian Studies, both in Leiden. In 1994 he was appointed as University Professor at Large at Utrecht University, a position he continues to hold. He has held visiting positions at the London School of Economics, the University of Chicago, University of Michigan, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the New School in New York, and the National University of Singapore.

The Religions and Public Life initiative is sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Divinity School, and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.

March 26, 5:30 pm
Westbrook Building room 0014

Katherine Marshall, senior fellow at Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, will be speaking March 5th at 5:30 pm as part of the Religions and Public Life speaker series.

Marshall has worked for over three decades on international development, with a focus on issues facing the world’s poorest countries. She is also currently a Visiting Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Her long career with the World Bank (1971-2006) involved a wide range of leadership assignments, many focused on Africa. From 2000-2006 her mandate covered ethics, values, and faith in development work, as counselor to the World Bank’s President. She led the Bank’s work on social policy and governance during the East Asia crisis years. Marshall has been closely engaged in the creation and development of the World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD) and is its Executive Director. She serves on the Boards of several NGOs and advisory groups, including AVINA Americas, the Niwano Peace Prize International Selection Committee, and the Opus Prize Foundation.

The Religions and Public Life initiative is sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Divinity School, and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.

March 5, 5:30 pm
Westbrook Building room 0014

“Pentecostalism, Poverty, and Power”

Ruth Marshall, Assistant Professor in the Study of Religion, University of Toronto, will be speaking February 26th at 5:30 pm as part of the Religions and Public Life speaker series.

Marshall’s academic interests include religion and politics, African politics and post-colonial theory, political philosophy, transnational religion, and Pentecostalism. Her research focuses on Africa, especially West Africa, with a focus on transnational religion, war and violence, youth militias, citizenship, ethno-nationalism, autochthony, and international interventionism.  Some of her publications include “Prospérité Miraculeuse: Les pasteurs pentecôtistes et l’argent de Dieu au Nigéria”; “Mediating the Global and Local in Nigerian Pentecostalism”; and “‘God is not a Democrat’: Pentecostalism and Democratisation in Nigeria” in  Paul Gifford (ed.) The Christian Churches and the Democratisation of Africa.

The Religions and Public Life initiative is sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Divinity School, and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.

February 26, 5:30 pm
Westbrook Building room 0014

José Casanova, Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University and head of the Berkley Center’s Program on Globalization, Religion and the Secular, will be speaking Tuesday, February 12th at 5:30 pm as part of the Religions and Public Life speaker series.

Casanova is one of the world’s top scholars in the sociology of religion. He has published works in a broad range of subjects, including religion and globalization, migration and religious pluralism, transnational religions, and sociological theory. His best-known work, Public Religions in the Modern World (1994), has become a modern classic in the field and has been translated into five languages, including Arabic and Indonesian. In 2012, Casanova was awarded the Theology Prize from the Salzburger Hochschulwochen in recognition of life-long achievement in the field of theology.

The Religions and Public Life initiative is sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Divinity School, and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.

February 19, 5:30 pm
Westbrook Building room 0014

Francis Cardinal George, OMI, Catholic Archbishop of Chicago, will be speaking Tuesday, February 12th at 11:30 am as part of the Religions and Public Life speaker series.

Cardinal Francis George is the first Chicago native to become Archbishop of Chicago. He is the thirteenth Ordinary of Chicago since its establishment as a diocese in 1843. The northwest side native, a member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, is the sixth Cardinal to lead the Chicago Archdiocese’s 2.3 million Catholics. He has assumed a prominent position among U.S. bishops, serving as the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2007 to 2010. His pastoral leadership encompasses international and national audiences.

The Religions and Public Life initiative is sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Divinity School, and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.

February 12, 11:30 am

Westbrook Building room 0012

Dr. Jones writes a weekly “Figuring Faith” column at the Washington Post’s On Faith section. Dr. Jones serves on the national steering committees for both the Religion and Politics Section and the Religion and the Social Sciences Section at the American Academy of Religion and is a member of the editorial board for “Politics and Religion,” a journal of the American Political Science Association. He is also an active member of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the Society of Christian Ethics, and the American Association of Public Opinion Research. He holds a Ph.D. in religion from Emory University, where he specialized in sociology of religion, politics, and religious ethics. He also holds a M.Div. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Before founding PRRI, Dr. Jones worked as a consultant and senior research fellow at several think tanks in Washington, DC, and was assistant professor of religious studies at Missouri State University.  Dr. Jones is frequently featured in major national media such as CNN, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time Magazine, and others. Dr. Jones’ two books are Progressive & Religious: How Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist Leaders are Moving Beyond the Culture Wars and Transforming American Public Life and Liberalism’s Troubled Search for Equality.

Religious Minorities in America: Islam in Context
Thursday, January 24
4:00PM – 5:30PM
John Hope Franklin Center 240

Flooding the Desert: Religious-Based Mobilizing to Save Lives Along the Sonora-Arizona Border

Kraig Beyerlein, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Notre Dame University, will be speaking November 26^th as part of the Monday Seminar Series from 12:00-1:30 in room 101, West Duke Building.

The talk will address the nature and origins of congregation-based support for humanitarian aid in the desert and the different models of congregation-based activism. Additionally, he will explore why some congregations resist supporting/participating in the humanitarian aid movement, and the consequences of congregation-based humanitarian service for activists, especially non-religious participants.

Beyerlein teaches and engages in research in the areas of collective behavior/social movements, civic engagement/volunteerism, social networks, and the sociology of religion, especially congregation-based mobilization. He has published articles on these topics in such journals as the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Mobilization, Social Forces, and Social Problems. Before coming to Notre Dame in the fall of 2009, he spent three years in the Sociology Department at the University of Arizona as an assistant professor. He received his Ph.D in 2006 from the Sociology Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Climate Change and the Church in the Southeast:  Exploring Moral and Theological Resources and Principles, November 29, 2012

Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke Divinity and Nicholas Institute faculty as well as theologians and clergy members from other institutions to discuss strategies for engaging religious communities in discussing and leading efforts to fight climate change. Due to limited space, participation is invitation-only.

Thursday, November 1 at 7:30 pm
Duke Divinity School
0016 Westbrook Building