Please note that the Lectures in Catholic Experience with Dr. Gary J. Adler Jr. scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on February 27th has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused, and we hope to reschedule his lecture in the future.
For information on the Lectures in Catholic Experience and the schedule of speakers, please go to our Lectures in Catholic Experience website.
How Catholics Govern: Examining the Religiosity and Policy Preferences of Local Government Officials
About the Lecture
Catholics inhabit the highest reaches of federal government in the United States: the presidency, the last two congressional speakerships, and six of nine Supreme Court justices. In a polarized country, much has been said about the conflicting ways these prominent Catholics connect their religiosity to public service. In this talk, I turn our attention to the local level, away from the terrain of polarized cultural issues to examine how Catholicism influences everyday governance. I show how Catholic officials, who comprise nearly 30% of all locally elected officials, draw on their spirituality and support religious equality in a pluralist society.
Biography
Gary Adler (Ph.D. University of Arizona; M.A. Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley; B.A. University of Dayton) examines how culture works at the intersection of religion and politics. He co-directs the American Local Leaders Study about ways that local government officials engage with religion and navigate religion-state law in practice. He is the author of Empathy Beyond U.S. Borders (Cambridge), American Parishes: Remaking Local Catholicism (Fordham), and Secularism, Catholicism, and the Future of Public Life (Oxford). He has received numerous awards, including from the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Fellowship Program, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and the American Sociological Association.