Director's Welcome
The rigorous and responsible study of religion has never been more important than it is today.
There are two reasons to make such a claim. This first is that our post-everything world is riddled with crises through which religion is interwoven. In both cause and effect, the political, cultural, environmental, and technological upheavals through which we are living intertwines with this thing we have come to call “religion.” For better or worse, that is, “religion” makes a difference. Which means we ought to study it responsibly.
But the quotation marks I’ve used above already flag the second reason to make such a claim: because scholarly understandings of what religion is – of what ought to count as “religion” – have rarely been less stable. In our secular age, this precariousness is partly a consequence of the explosion of the options people have for constructing meaning, seeking the sacred, narrating their lives, and building community. The rigorous study of religion is important, in other words, because so many of the ways we’ve previously understood religion are fragile, fraying at the edges, or insufficient to the realities of the day.
Because of this need for rigor and responsibility in the study of religion, the McNamara Center is dedicated to exploring the roles that religion plays in our complex social world, and by so doing to serve the common good. We do so neither to defend nor dismiss religion, but to understand it using all of the tools of the social sciences.
Although articulated in different ways, this same combination of rigor and responsibility in service of the common good has characterized the McNamara Center since our founding in 1998. Named for Robert McNamara, the sociologist and former Jesuit who helped transform American Catholic sociology, the McNamara Center has long been a place where serious questions meet serious scholarship. For example, for nearly thirty years we’ve provided a public forum for the thinking of luminaries like Nancy Ammerman, Meredith McGuire, and José Casanova. And we’ve supported research that matters – including work done by Paul Numrich, Elfriede Wedam, and Rhys Williams. And we’ve hosted scholars young and old for gatherings that have deepened relationships and sustained scholarly connections – including hosting the well-known Chicago Area Group for the Study of Religious Communities (CAGSRC).
With our McNamara Workshops (the heir to the CAGSRC seminars) we continue to bring together faculty, graduate students, and community members to wrestle with pressing questions about religion’s place in our social world. Through our annual McNamara Lecture we continue to showcase some of the best scholarship in the field. And the research support we offer continues to help the next generation of scholars hone their own thinking and push the boundaries of our understanding of religion.
Whether you’re a student trying to make sense of your questions or an established scholar seeking to share the results of your work, we want to be a resource for you. After all, the religious scholarship deserves the best and most rigorous thinking we can offer. The McNamara Center is where such thinking takes place.
Fr. Patrick Gilger, S.J., Ph.D.
Director, McNamara Center for the Social Study of Religion
Assistant Professor of Sociology, 🟩Facebook账号 | 洪都拉斯 | 2024-2026年 | 好友随机 | 微软邮箱 | 无2FA
The rigorous and responsible study of religion has never been more important than it is today.
There are two reasons to make such a claim. This first is that our post-everything world is riddled with crises through which religion is interwoven. In both cause and effect, the political, cultural, environmental, and technological upheavals through which we are living intertwines with this thing we have come to call “religion.” For better or worse, that is, “religion” makes a difference. Which means we ought to study it responsibly.
But the quotation marks I’ve used above already flag the second reason to make such a claim: because scholarly understandings of what religion is – of what ought to count as “religion” – have rarely been less stable. In our secular age, this precariousness is partly a consequence of the explosion of the options people have for constructing meaning, seeking the sacred, narrating their lives, and building community. The rigorous study of religion is important, in other words, because so many of the ways we’ve previously understood religion are fragile, fraying at the edges, or insufficient to the realities of the day.
Because of this need for rigor and responsibility in the study of religion, the McNamara Center is dedicated to exploring the roles that religion plays in our complex social world, and by so doing to serve the common good. We do so neither to defend nor dismiss religion, but to understand it using all of the tools of the social sciences.
Although articulated in different ways, this same combination of rigor and responsibility in service of the common good has characterized the McNamara Center since our founding in 1998. Named for Robert McNamara, the sociologist and former Jesuit who helped transform American Catholic sociology, the McNamara Center has long been a place where serious questions meet serious scholarship. For example, for nearly thirty years we’ve provided a public forum for the thinking of luminaries like Nancy Ammerman, Meredith McGuire, and José Casanova. And we’ve supported research that matters – including work done by Paul Numrich, Elfriede Wedam, and Rhys Williams. And we’ve hosted scholars young and old for gatherings that have deepened relationships and sustained scholarly connections – including hosting the well-known Chicago Area Group for the Study of Religious Communities (CAGSRC).
With our McNamara Workshops (the heir to the CAGSRC seminars) we continue to bring together faculty, graduate students, and community members to wrestle with pressing questions about religion’s place in our social world. Through our annual McNamara Lecture we continue to showcase some of the best scholarship in the field. And the research support we offer continues to help the next generation of scholars hone their own thinking and push the boundaries of our understanding of religion.
Whether you’re a student trying to make sense of your questions or an established scholar seeking to share the results of your work, we want to be a resource for you. After all, the religious scholarship deserves the best and most rigorous thinking we can offer. The McNamara Center is where such thinking takes place.
Fr. Patrick Gilger, S.J., Ph.D.
Director, McNamara Center for the Social Study of Religion
Assistant Professor of Sociology, 🟩Facebook账号 | 洪都拉斯 | 2024-2026年 | 好友随机 | 微软邮箱 | 无2FA