Religion, Challenging or Preserving the Status Quo?

Presented by Kraig Beyerlein

What explains why certain religious people and organizations mobilize to protest power structures and social inequality while others are indifferent or organize to maintain these structures and inequality? Are religious differences—such as those grounded in theological beliefs or denominational affiliations—a key to answering this question? How significant are the following variables of individuals or faith-based institutions: race, ethnicity, gender, immigrant status, or political ideology? And what about contextual factors? For example, does the social class or density of congregations in neighborhoods matter for understanding when religion resists or perpetuates the status quo? In this seminar, we will draw on various historical and contemporary cases as well as different social-scientific methodologies (e.g., surveys, in-depth interviews, ethnographies, and archival research) to address these and related questions.

About Kraig Beyerlein

Kraig Beyerlein is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. He is also a faculty affiliate at the Center for the Study of Social Movements, a faculty fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Latino Studies. Kraig received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was a faculty member in the Sociology Department at the University of Arizona before coming to Notre Dame. His research and teaching focuses on the intersection of religion and collective action, especially civic engagement and protest activity. Kraig has a particular interest in the role of faith in mobilizing progressive social activism, such as immigrant rights and the recent Women’s March. Published articles on these and related topics appear in the American Sociological Review, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Mobilization, Poetics, Politics and Religion, Social Forces, Social Problems, Social Science Research, Sociological Methods and Research, and the Sociology of Religion. He is currently finishing a book manuscript on the causes and consequences of faith-based mobilizing to save lives along the Arizona-Sonora border. Kraig is the current chair of the American Sociological Association’s Altruism, Morality, and Solidarity section (for which he served as elected council member before) and current elected council member for the Association for the Sociology of Religion. He has also served as an elected council member for the American Sociological Association’s Religion section as well as the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Kraig is currently on the editorial boards of the American Sociological Review, Social Science Research, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and Sociology of Religion. Various internal and external grants, including those from the Lilly Endowment, Inc., Louisville Institute, Spencer Foundation, and the National Science Foundation have supported Kraig’s research over the years.