About the Event
Hosted by AAR’s Committee on the Public Understanding of Religion
“Jesus saves” banners at the January 6th insurrection. Evangelical elevation of President Trump as God’s elect. Claims of religious freedom used to justify discrimination. Scriptural “prooftexts” wielded to strip individuals of civil rights. Growing affection in religious communities for authoritarian models of government. Religion is playing significant roles in contemporary crises of democracy. How is it perceived in the public imagination and how can we as scholars advance public understanding of the stakes?
Event Guidelines
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Panelists
Robert Jones is the president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). He is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future (2023), as well as White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, which won a 2021 American Book Award. He is also the author of The End of White Christian America, which won the 2019 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Jones writes regularly on politics, culture, and religion for The Atlantic, TIME, Religion News Service, and other outlets. He is frequently featured in major national media, such as CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others. Jones writes a weekly newsletter for those dedicated to the work of truth-telling, repair, and healing from the legacy of white supremacy in American Christianity at www.whitetoolong.net. His substack is at whitetoolong.
Katherine Stewart has been covering the rise of the anti-democratic movement for over 16 years. Her latest book, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy (Bloomsbury 2025), is an instant New York Times bestseller. Her previous book, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (Bloomsbury 2020), won First Place in the Nonfiction Books category from the Religion News Association, as well as a Morris B. Forkosch Best Book award. The Power Worshippers formed the basis of the documentary feature God & Country, produced by Rob Reiner and Michele Reiner; Stewart served as executive producer. Her 2012 book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children, focused on the religious right’s efforts to undermine public education. Stewart’s writing appears in The New York Times op ed, New Republic, Religion News Service and others. Her substack is at katherinestewartbooks, and she is on Bluesky at katherinestewart.bsky.social.
Eddie Glaude is a passionate educator, author, political commentator, and public intellectual who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul and the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, take an exhaustive look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States, and the challenges we face as a democracy. His most recent book, We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, is a politically astute, lyrical meditation on how ordinary people can shake off their reliance on a small group of professional politicians and assume responsibility for what it takes to achieve a more just and perfect democracy. Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and is former president of the American Academy of Religion.
Moderator
Rachel Mikva serves as the Herman E. Schaalman Professor in Jewish Studies and Senior Faculty Fellow of the InterReligious Institute at Chicago Theological Seminary. Ordained in the Reform movement, Rabbi Mikva served as a congregational rabbi for 13 years before returning to the academy. With a passion for justice and academic expertise in the history of scriptural interpretation, her courses and publications address a range of Jewish and comparative studies, with a special interest in the intersections of sacred texts, culture and ethics. Her most recent books are Interreligious Studies: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2023); and Monotheism and Pluralism (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
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