In the Classroom
We offer a broad and diverse undergraduate curriculum focusing on the intertwined relationship between religion and politics across U.S. history, from the colonial era to the present. We also support early career scholars with fellowships that offer teaching and research opportunities at the Center.

Courses
Our courses range widely in topics, but all focus on the cultivation of research and interpretive skills necessary for analyzing and responding to issues that shape society and culture in the United States.
Gateway Courses
Gateway courses are required for the minor in religion and politics and serve as an introduction to the field of study.
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L57 RelPol 201
Religion and American Society
This course investigates the many ways that U.S. culture, politics, and society shape—and are shaped by—religious beliefs and practices.
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Professor
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L57 RelPol 210
The Good Life between Religion and Politics
This course considers the way religious and political thought has shaped considerations of the classical ethical question of how we should live.
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Assistant Professor
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L57 RelPol 225
Religion and Politics in American History
This course traces how conceptions of “religion” and “the state” changed in the United States from the turn of the twentieth century to the dawn of a new millennium.
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Postdoctoral Fellow
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L57 RelPol 320
Religious Freedom in America
This course investigates the intersections of the law and the social history of religious freedom in America. It examines issues such as constitutional principles of religious freedom and the rights of religious groups to dissent, from America’s founding to the present.
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Professor
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Professor
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Courses
Our courses cover a wide spectrum of topics related to the intersection of American religion and politics both historically and in the present. Select a semester to see our most recent course offerings or scroll to the bottom to view past courses.
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L57 RelPol 201
Religion and American Society
This course investigates the many ways that U.S. culture, politics, and society shape—and are shaped by—religious beliefs and practices.
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Professor
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L57 RelPol 203
Religions of the American Midwest
The Midwest is the crossroads of America, a major driver of industrial, economic, and political change in the United States since the early nineteenth century. Viewed from St. Louis, what makes this region such a rich place of religious encounter, experimentation, and reinvention?
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Postdoctoral Fellow
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L57 RelPol 207c
Modern Political Thought: Text and Traditions
This course pursues two major lines of inquiry in modern Western political thought: the relation between the individual and the state, and the means of holding state power accountable.
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Assistant Professor
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L57 RelPol 225
Religion and Politics in American History
This course traces how conceptions of “religion” and “the state” changed in the United States from the turn of the twentieth century to the dawn of a new millennium.
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Postdoctoral Fellow
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L57 RelPol 235
Puritans, Native Americans, and Revolutionaries: Empire and Encounter in Early America
This course considers religion and politics in the founding period of English settlement in America through the American Revolution. It pays particular attention to ideas about the good society, interactions among Indigenous (or Native) Americans and English settlers, and revolution.
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Professor
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L57 RelPol 245
Love and Reason
This course offers an introduction to modern Christian thought and Western philosophy through themes of love and reason.
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Assistant Professor
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L57 RelPol 252
Catholicism Confronts Modernity: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis
This course explores the creative tension between Catholicism and “modernity,” in the US and beyond, from the French Revolution to the present.
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Postdoctoral Fellow
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L57 RelPol 3345
The Politics of Play and Protest: Religion and Sports in America
This course will examine the close relationship between religion and sport in modern American history and will push students beyond the sports-as-religion paradigm to consider sport as a medium of exchange between the overlapping influences of celebrity, national politics, religion, and the economy.
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Postdoctoral Fellow
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L57 RelPol 354
Christian Theology and Politics in the Modern West
What does theology have to do with politics? This course attempts to answer that question by reading and discussing important texts from the western Christian tradition and investigating what they have to say about issues such as political revolution, loyalties to the nation, economic policy, gender, and race.
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Professor
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L57 RelPol 370
Religion and the Origins of Capitalism
This course examines the relationship between religion and the development of a capitalist economy in Europe, England, and America from 1550 to 1800.
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Professor
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L57 RelPol 390
Mormon History in Global Context
This seminar will explore the roots and development of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, both inside the U.S. and abroad. We will pay particular attention to beliefs, economic and social values, gender, and race as variables within the religious community.
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Professor
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L57 RelPol 425
Law, Religion, and Politics
This course will explore the role of religious argument in politics and law through the work of legal scholars, theologians, and political theorists.
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Professor
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L57 RelPol 430
Spiritual But Not Religious: The Politics of American Spirituality
This seminar focuses on the formation of “spirituality” in American culture from the Transcendentalist world of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman on through more recent expressions of the “spiritual-but-not-religious” sensibility.
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Professor
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L57 RelPol 4491
American Unbelief from the Enlightenment to the Present
This seminar examines American freethinkers, secularists, humanists, and atheists.
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Professor
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