'Who's Afraid of American Religion?': Boston-based Political Scientist to Talk at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Alan Wolfe, professor of political science and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, will give a lecture titled "Who's Afraid of American Religion?," on Wednesday, Oct. 29 at 4:30 p.m. in the Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross. The lecture, free and open to the public, is part of the Deitchman Family Lectures on Religion and Modernity. This series explores the place of religious and spiritual life in a world that is sometimes at odds with faith, other times in search of it, and always at work reshaping it.

Wolfe is the author of numerous books.  His most recent titles include Does American Democracy Still Work? (Yale University Press, 2006), Return to Greatness: How America Lost Its Sense of Purpose and What it Needs to Do to Recover It (Princeton University Press, 2005), The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Practice our Faith (Free Press, 2003), and An Intellectual in Public (University of Michigan Press, 2003).

Wolfe received his B.S. from Temple University and his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania. He has received honorary degrees from Loyola College in Maryland and St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia.

He currently chairs a task force of the American Political Science Association on "Religion and Democracy in the United States,” serves on the advisory boards of Humanity in Action and the Future of American Democracy Foundation and on the president's advisory board of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. He is also a senior fellow with the World Policy Institute at the New School University in New York. In 2004, Wolfe was the George H. W. Bush Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.

Lecturing at numerous universities across the U.S. and Europe, Wolf served as an advisor to President Clinton in preparation for his 1995 State of the Union address. He is currently a contributing editor and writer for The New Republic, Wilson Quarterly, Commonwealth Magazine and In Character. His work has been published in several media outlets including Commonweal, The New York Times, Harper's, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post.