Religious nationalism is not bound by national borders. Examining Christian nationalism in the United States and Brazil provides an opportunity to discuss the similarities and differences in its history, prominence, and influence in a cross-national perspective. This discussion will also reflect on the various responses to religious nationalism in each country both institutionally and across the population. In this episode of Religion &, we will explore the intersection of two contrasting versions of Christian nationalism and how we might better understand the impetus for and responses to each.

Andrew Whitehead is Professor of Sociology and Executive Director of the Association of Religion Data Archives (theARDA.com) at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University Indianapolis. He is also a research fellow for the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. Whitehead is one of the foremost scholars of Christian nationalism in the United States. He is the author of American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church, which was awarded the 2024 Gold Medal Book Award for Religion from Foreword Reviews and the 2024 Midwest Book Award winner for Religion & Philosophy.

João Chaves is Assistant Professor of the History of Religion in the Americas at Baylor University’s Department of Religion. At Baylor, he also serves as a codirector of the Baptist Scholars International Roundtable, a member of the Graduate Faculty in Religion, and an affiliated faculty member in the Ethics Initiative of the College of Arts and Sciences. An award-winning author of several books, Chaves is currently working on projects that examine Latino migration and religion, the Christian far right in the Americas, and transnational investment patterns of immigrant-led churches in the US. His public-facing scholarship has been published in various periodicals and magazines, including The Washington Post and The Christian Century.

Miranda Cruz is Professor of Historical Theology at Indiana Wesleyan University. She teaches theology and church history, with a focus on the practical application of Christian doctrine in life and ministry. She has written several articles on topics related to Christianity under Communism in Eastern Europe. She is also the author of Faithful Politics: Ten Approaches to Christian Citizenship and Why It Matters (IVP Academic, 2024).

Ronilso Pacheco, a Brazilian theologian graduated from PUC-Rio (Catholic Pontifical University of Rio de Janeiro) and holds an M.A. in Religion and Society from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Ronilso is the program director at ISER (Institute of Studies on Religion) and was a professor of Ethics in the Philosophy Department at Manhattan University. Ronilso is a researcher interested in democracy, race, fundamentalism, and extremism. He is the author of the books Teologia Negra (Black Theology) and Occupy, Resist, and Subvert. He is a frequent contributor to various media outlets in Brazil and a regular columnist for the UOL channel, where he comments on international politics and religion.

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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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