Social Science Research Council

Among the striking but not always recognized dimensions of globalization is a more or less simultaneous revitalization of religious engagement. This includes private devotion and renewal of theological study and debate, but it is also, centrally, a claim to public relevance. The prominence of religion in American public life has grown, as have the religious dimensions of international conflicts and terrorism. Religion has also increasingly offered resources for resolving conflicts and seeking reconciliation, through the efforts of international movements of peace and the work of faith-based nongovernmental organizations, and, controversially, in the functioning of state-sponsored truth commissions. The SSRC examines these and other changes in the relationships between religion and the public sphere.

Working Groups on Religion and International Affairs

With initial support from the Luce Foundation, the SSRC aims to strengthen both scholarly and public attention to religion’s place in international affairs. Working with researchers and practitioners to catalyze new thinking and to construct new agendas for research, the SSRC seeks to foster innovative engagements with prevailing approaches to the study of religion in international perspective. Its work supports the integration of scholarship on religion into the teaching and research of schools of international and public affairs, and aims to build interdisciplinary networks, strengthening connections between a diverse range of projects and initiatives. A Working Group on Religion, Secularism, and International Affairs analyzes the intellectual neglect of religion and the power of secularism in the arena of international affairs, while an Advisory Committee for Religion and International Affairs seeks to draw on and further develop a renewed attention to religion in both schools of international affairs and the broader world of public policy. Each group is producing an edited volume.

Spirituality, Political Engagement, and Public Life

Building on recent scholarship, and with support from the Ford Foundation, this new SSRC project will explore how spiritual practice, identity, and experience shape social action, political participation, and public life in the United States. The project is fundamentally concerned with how the varying structures and shapes of contemporary spiritual identity present alternatives to, critiques of, or cautionary tales about dominant understandings of what it means to be socially and politically engaged in the United States. What institutions, structures, and religious traditions shape spiritual identity and action, and how do these relate to systems and structures of political participation? What do “spiritual” actors and engagements do to challenge our understandings of the norms of social and political involvement? How strong and how deep are the commitments of such actors to any particular set of political goals or ideals of citizenship? In what ways do they engage in public life, and how do their patterns of involvement systematically differ from those of others?

The Immanent Frame

Launched in October 2007, The Immanent Frame, a collective blog on secularism, religion, and the public sphere, hosts ongoing discussions of major new books on secularism and religion, and on a range of other topics. The blog has received significant media attention and was an Official Honoree of the 2008 Webby Awards.