Search for a topic and join the conversation!
Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. Smith’s research focuses primarily on religion in modernity, adolescents, American evangelicalism, and culture. Smith received his MA and PhD from Harvard University in 1990. Smith was a Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for 12 years before his move to Notre Dame. He is the author of several books including: What Is a Person? Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up (Chicago); The Secular Revolution (California); Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture (Oxford); and Christian America?: What Evangelicals Really Want (California). Smith has also co-authored several books including: Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults (Oxford); Soul Searching: the Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford); and American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving (Chicago).
Dr. Jason E. Shelton is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for African American Studies at the University of Texas at Arlington. His research interests concern the sociology of religion, as well as the intersections of race, class, and attitudes about various political and social issues in contemporary America. Dr. Shelton’s articles have appeared in Social Science Quarterly, Du Bois Review, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Sociological Perspectives, Journal of African American Studies, American Behavioral Scientist, and other respected publications. New York University Press published his first book, Blacks and Whites in Christian America: How Racial Discrimination Shapes Religious Convictions, which won a major award sponsored by the Southern Conference on African American Studies and an “honorable mention” from the American Sociological Association’s Section on the Sociology of Religion. NYU Press recently published his second book, The Contemporary Black Church: The New Dynamics of African American Religion.