This event is presented by the University of Pennsylvania’s Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society and Collegium Institute. It is the second event in the PRRUCS-CI Spring Series on Global Religion. You can view the recording of the first event in the series, Religion after the Pandemic: Forecasting the Global Future of Faith featuring Prof. Philip Jenkins, here.
For the first two millennia of the common era, plagues have summoned religion. On their way out of this life, the sick have sought divine solace for the afterlife, and they have been accompanied by women and men inspired by religion to be their caretakers. This past year, however, religion has been re-envisioned in many quarters as part of a public health problem. What implications does that have for the future of religious freedom? Must communities hereafter confront a difficult decision to make themselves either safe for religion or safe from it? How does this issue in the United States look different when approached from a global perspective? In what parts of the world is religious freedom progressing and where is it diminishing? How concerned should all citizens be, and what can be done? These questions will be considered by a multi-faith panel of leading thinkers, activists, and international field workers including:
Dr. Timothy Shah is a Senior Research Fellow of the Archbridge Institute. With funding from the Templeton Religion Trust, he spearheaded an analysis of the religious freedom landscape as well as viable religious freedom strategies in South and Southeast Asia (2017-2020), and is currently based in Bangalore, India. Previously he was senior advisor and director of the Religious Freedom Institute's South and Southeast Asia Action Team and research professor of government at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion as well as associate director of the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project, director for international research of the center's Religious Freedom Research Project, and associate professor of the practice of religion and global politics in Georgetown University's Government Department. Shah is now also a Distinguished Research Scholar in the Politics Department at the University of Dallas as well as scholar and project architect of the Freedom of Religious Institutions in Society (FORIS) project. He is author of Even if There is No God: Hugo Grotius and the Secular Foundations of Modern Political Liberalism (OUP, forthcoming) and Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right (Witherspoon Institute, 2012). He is co-author of God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics (W.W. Norton, 2011) and, most recently, co-editor (with Daniel Philpott) of Under Caesar’s Sword: Christian Responses to Persecution (Cambridge, 2018) and co-editor of Homo Religiosus?: Exploring the Roots of Religion and Religious Freedom in Human Experience (Cambridge, 2018).
Dr. Jacqueline Rivers is Executive Director of the Seymour Institute on Black Church and Policy Studies. Dr. Rivers works with leaders in the ecumenical black church to promote a philosophical, political, and theological framework for a pro-poor, pro-life, pro-family movement. She is a Hutchins Fellow in the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at Harvard University. She also completed her Ph.D. at Harvard University where she was a Doctoral Fellow in the Multi-Disciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy of the J.F. Kennedy School of Government. She has worked on issues of social justice and Christian activism in the black community for more than thirty years. She serves on the Board of Advisors for the Religious Freedom Institute.
Dr. Ferdous Jahan is Senior Social Development Specialist at the World Bank. Currently based in Bangkok, Thailand, she was formerly Associate Director of Fox Leadership International at the University of Pennsylvania, Professor of Public Administration at the University of Dhaka, and Academic Coordinator at the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development. Her current research involves governance, social protection, urban poverty and the legal empowerment of women and the poor in developing nations. She completed her PhD in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and is now also a Senior Affiliate of Penn’s Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society (PRRUCS).
Dr. Daniel Mark is former commissioner and chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and is currently an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University. In addition to his efforts championing international religious freedom, Dr. Mark is a fellow of the Witherspoon Institute and works with the Tikvah Fund. He is an affiliated scholar of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding, of the Religious Freedom Institute, and of the American Bible Society’s Faith and Discovery Learning Center in Philadelphia. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty. Having completed his Ph.D. at Princeton University, Dr. Mark conducts research in the fields of American government, political theory, law and morals, and politics and religion, among others.
This event is cosponsored by the Archbridge Institute, the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, the Fordham Center on Religion and Culture, the Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies, and the Religious Freedom Institute’s Freedom of Religious Institutions in Society Project (FORIS).
Date: Tuesday, March 23, 2021
Time: 10:00 AM-12:00 PM ET
Location: Zoom
Registration: This webinar is free and open to the public. Click the button on the left to sign up.
This webinar was recorded. To watch the video on our YouTube channel, click the button on the right.