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The following feature story appeared in the campus publication Mosaic in March, 2000.

CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION IN PUBLIC LIFE

Exploring the manifestations of religion in life

It is an increasingly common assumption that technological modernization, scientific advances, and globalization are contributing to a decrease in the importance of religion in the world. Trinity’s Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life is proving that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the demise of religion as a powerful force in society are greatly exaggerated.

The Center "explores the nonobvious, complicated ways in which religious identity, religious impulses, and religious ideals work their way through human events," according to Center director Mark Silk. In doing so, the Center has become a presenter of nationally significant lectures and conferences, a resource to policy makers and journalists, an instigator of scholarly exploration on Trinity’s campus and elsewhere, and the nation’s leading authority in the field of religion in the news media. The Center has also garnered several prestigious foundation grants to augment its explorations of the vital social roles religion plays.

The Center for Religion in Public Life was founded four years ago, in part with funding from Trinity alumnus and benefactor Leonard E. Greenberg ’48, who also has helped establish Trinity’s Jewish studies program. The Center, recently renamed in Greenberg’s honor, began by sponsoring a variety of workshops, panels, and lectures on such topics as religion and incarcerated youth, anti-Catholicism in America, and Jewish religious pluralism in the Middle East. Grant monies soon followed, enabling the Center to extend its range of ambitious and highly relevant projects. Last September, the Center’s two-day mini-conference on "Religious Persecution as a U.S. Foreign Policy Issue," funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, attracted top scholars, representatives from prominent human rights organizations, congressional aides, federal officials, and journalists. The Center is currently gearing up for a busy spring. Eileen Barker, professor of sociology at the London School of Economics and an expert on new religious movements in Europe, will be at Trinity as the Center’s Visiting Fellow, and in April the Center will sponsor a major conference, "Religion on the Foreign Desk," for journalists and editors who cover international affairs.

A focus on the media

In exploring the roles religion plays in public life, the Center has brought sharply into focus the complex relation between religion and the news media. Silk notes that the media is a key area for study because "it both shapes and reflects public attitudes." The Center, in fact, has gained national prominence in the field of religion in the media, and its important work in this arena is generally credited to Silk’s understanding of academia and the media and his stellar reputation in both areas. With a doctorate in medieval history from Harvard, Silk was for many years a writer and editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and he has written a number of books, including Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America (1995). Something of a matchmaker, Silk understands what journalists need and how they operate and brings them together with academic experts. One important result of Silk’s matchmaking is the Center’s co-sponsorship with the American Academy of Religion of a series of seven regional workshops funded by the Lilly Endowment. The intensive workshops join religion scholars with journalists to work toward improving the quality of the media’s coverage of religion, which will, in turn, help increase public understanding.

Other key initiatives include the Center’s comprehensive series of programs on religion and the news media, launched in 1997 with a major grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Through conferences and publications, the Pew program explores how American broadcast and print media cover the religious dimensions of the news. A conference for journalists on "Religion and American Politics: Looking to the 2000 Elections" last spring generated a published volume of original papers by the conference’s presenters. There is evidence that the Center’s work is having the desired effect. Richard Griffiths, a senior executive producer at CNN, states that sending a journalist to that conference resulted in "a tremendous amount of insight that has really influenced us in terms of political coverage." The Center’s Religion in the News, a journal published three times a year, provides analysis and commentary on not only religion-centered news coverage but also religious angles in other news stories. Its mailing list of about 8,000 includes academics, broadcast journalists in the major markets, and print journalists at every daily newspaper in the country.

A presence on campus

While the Center produces programs and projects with far-reaching influence, it also seeks to enhance the intellectual life of undergraduates and their teachers at Trinity. Courses taught by Silk, who is an adjunct associate professor of religion, and by Andrew Walsh, the Center’s associate director and a visiting assistant professor of religion, have enriched curricular offerings in the fields of American studies, religion, and public policy. Study-group luncheons, sponsored by the Center and attended by faculty members from Trinity and other institutions in Connecticut, have sparked cross-disciplinary dialogue among academics. Professor of Religion Frank Kirkpatrick notes that the Center is enlarging students’ understanding of religion as an academic subject. Conferences and lectures on such topics as the Catholic treatment of the Holocaust have sparked students’ interests and, according to Kirkpatrick, have helped the Center to "open up students’ eyes to the study of religion in a way that courses may not."

Associate Professor of Legal Studies Adrienne Fulco calls the Center "a wonderful resource" that "provides an intellectual space to explore the role of religion." Last spring Fulco invited the Center’s 1999 Visiting Fellow, Marc D. Stern, a renowned First-Amendment lawyer, to guest-teach her Constitutional law class. Stern, whose weeklong stay offered a variety of learning opportunities for the Trinity community, assigned case studies for Fulco’s students to read and then led class discussion. "He is the architect of some of the reasoning in several of the Supreme Court cases we were studying," notes Fulco. "He was really giving us an insider’s view."

The Center also has offered unique opportunities to a series of undergraduate fellows during the past few years. Current fellows Thomas W. Hambrick-Stowe ’01, a religion major, and James A. Reardon ’02, a political science and Spanish double-major, both value the opportunity to have extracurricular intellectual, even collegial, relationships with the Center’s staff. One of the most productive benefits, according Hambrick-Stowe, is learning from Silk how to write like a journalist. Hambrick-Stowe’s first article for the nationally distributed Religion in the News will be published in the spring 2000 issue. Reardon notes that his exposure to the scholarly work of the Center has expanded his perspective, enabling him to see "a whole new dimension to political science."

Thanks to the Center, Trinity College provides a distinctive and important resource for understanding the roles religion plays in public life. As Kirkpatrick notes, it has "given enhanced visibility to the College in the world of people who study religion professionally. It has really put Trinity on their map."

-Leslie Virostek