Religion &: Conversations at the Center

Welcome to our new podcast series titled Religion &: Conversations at the Center. These episodes will feature conversations led by scholars at the Center for the Study of Religion & American Culture with thought leaders, provocateurs, and groundbreaking scholars and practitioners in the fields of religion and American culture. Our goal is to have conversations that will push the field and the broader public to think deeply and to elevate issues and questions about religion and religious communities that have otherwise been buried or under examined and bring them to the center for debate, engagement, and, hopefully, for communities to explore and transform these ideas together.

Our Conversation with Willie Jennings

In this episode, Dr. Joseph L. Tucker Edmonds, Associate Director of the Center, interviews Dr. Willie James Jennings, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Theology and Africana Studies at Yale University Divinity School. The two discuss a wide array of topics including the study and terminologies of Black thought, the relationship between scholarship and creativity that is often ignored, and the reality of connection that is centered on the natural world.

About Willie Jennings

Willie James Jennings is a theologian who teaches in the areas of Christian thought, race theory, decolonial, and environmental studies. Dr. Jennings is the author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race, published by Yale University Press and recipient of the 2010 American Academy of Religion Book of the Year in the Constructive-Reflective Studies category. It is one of the most important books in theology written in the last 25 years and is now a standard text read in colleges, seminaries, and universities.

Dr. Jennings’ commentary on the Book of Acts won the Reference Book of the Year Award from The Academy of Parish Clergy. He is also the author of After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging, which was the inaugural book in the much-anticipated book series, Theological Education Between the Times, and has already become an instant classic, winning the 2020 book of the year award from Publisher’s Weekly. It was also selected as a finalist for the 2021 American Academy of Religion Book of the Year in the Constructive-Reflective Studies category and in 2023 won the Lilly Fellows Program Book Award.

Dr. Jennings is completing work on a two-volume project on the doctrine of creation. Volume two, provisionally titled, Jesus and the Displaced: The Redemption of Habitation, will be published before volume one which carries the provisional title, Unfolding the Word: Recasting a Christian Doctrine of Creation. Dr. Jennings is also finishing a book of poetry entitled, The Time of Possession.

On this episode of Religion &, we invited scholars to engage in a wide-ranging conversation with Judith Weisenfeld on facets of her newest publication Black Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake (NYU Press, 2025). Listen to our conversation with Dr. Judith Weisenfeld that unpacks Black religious beliefs, new religious movements, and “religious excitement” as a psychiatric concept in institutionalization.

Joseph L. Tucker Edmonds is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at Indiana University Indianapolis and the Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies and Economics from Brown University, his Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and his PhD in Religious Studies from Duke University. His research interests are Black religion and the Black body, alternative Christianities, and the role of scripture in African and African American religious traditions. His book, The Other Black Church: Alternative Christian Movements and the Struggle for Black Freedom (Fortress, 2020), highlights the variety and vibrancy of the African American Christian sphere during the latter half of the twentieth century and it adds to the growing body of work that is addressing alternative Christian traditions in the Black public sphere.

Philippa Koch is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Missouri State University. Her research and teaching center on religion, health, and society in America and its global context. Her recent publications include “Records of Relinquishment: Caregiving and Emotion in the Philanthropy Archive,” an article which appeared in The Public Historian in May 2024, as well as her first book, The Course of God’s Providence: Religion, Health, and the Body in Early America, which was published in 2021 by NYU Press. She is currently working on her next book, Medicine and American Religion, which is under contract with Routledge.

Judith Weisenfeld is Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion and associated faculty in the Department of African American Studies and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton University. Her research focuses on early twentieth-century African American religious history, including the relation of religion to constructions of race, the impact on black religious life of migration, immigration, and urbanization, African American women’s religious history, religion in film and popular culture, and religion and medicine. She is the author of Black Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake (NYU Press, 2025), New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity During the Great Migration (NYU 2016), which won the 2017 Albert J. Raboteau Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions, Hollywood Be Thy Name: African American Religion in American Film, 1929–1949 (California 2007), and African American Women and Christian Activism: New York’s Black YWCA, 1905–1945 (Harvard 1997), as well as many articles and book chapters on topics in African American and American religious history and culture. Her current research focuses on the psychiatry, race, and Black religions in the late nineteenth and early 20th century United States.

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This episode will cover three new directions at the intersection of religion & Latinx traditions. First, panelists will reflect on politics and voting, offering insight from the 2024 election. Second, they will discuss emerging patterns in religious conversion or switching. Finally, the panelists will offer insight into new research directions in the field of US Latinx religion. Join us for an enlightening conversation where we explore Religion & Latinx Traditions.

Lloyd Barba is Assistant Professor of Religion and Core Faculty in Latinx and Latin American Studies at Amherst College. Along with Sergio González of Marquette University, he is the co-writer and co-host of the recently released, seven-episode podcast series Sanctuary: On the Border of Church and State. He is the author of the award-winning book Sowing the Sacred: Mexican-Pentecostal Farmworkers in California (Oxford University Press, 2022; paperback 2023) and editor of the newly-released volume Latin American and US Latino Religions in North America (Bloomsbury, 2024).

Jonathan Calvillo is Assistant Professor of Latinx Communities at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. His work examines how distinct Latine populations build communities of belonging through faith and creativity, often amidst systemic exclusion. As a sociologist and ethnographer, his expertise resides at the intersections of Latine lived religion, ethnoracial formation, civic engagement, urban migration, and grassroots creative movements. Calvillo has published three books: The Saints of Santa Ana: Faith and Ethnicity in a Mexican Majority City, In the Time of Sky-rhyming: How Hip Hop Resonated in Brown Los Angeles, and When the Spirit Is Your Inheritance: Reflections on Borderlands Pentecostalism.

Gastón Espinosa is Arthur V. Stoughton Professor of Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College. He has directed nine major surveys on Latino religions, politics, and activism from 1998–2022. He is the author or co-author of nine books; fifty refereed articles, book chapters, and reviews; sixty encyclopedia entries; 200 scholarly keynotes and presentations around the world; has made numerous television, radio, and media appearances; and has served as the director of eight major conferences.

Sujey Vega is Associate Professor of American Studies and Women and Gender Studies at Arizona State University. Trained as an applied anthropologist, Vega’s publications range from ethno-religious belonging, addressing the needs of Latina domestic violence survivors, and amplifying the voices of Latina/o Midwestern communities. Her first book, Latino Heartland (2015) earned honorable mention by the Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize committee. Her forthcoming book, Mormon Barrio: Latinx Belonging in the Church of Latter Day Saints, historically locates the growth of Latina/o LDS members in the Phoenix area and the role the LDS church plays in the lives of current Latino Mormons.

Check out additional resources for learning, teaching and watching.

Teaching and Learning Resources

Resources from Panelists

Show Notes & Major Questions

Learn more about this episode on the Religion & Website.