Posted on December 18, 2009

Washington University Receives $30 Million for Center on Religion and Politics

Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, has announced a $30 million gift from the Danforth Foundation to establish and endow a center that will focus on the role of religion in politics in the United States.

Scheduled to open in January, the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics will convene public conferences and lectures that address local, state, and national issues related to religion and politics while offering an educational program in the subject, including an interdisciplinary undergraduate minor in religion and public life. Five new faculty members will be recruited to hold endowed professorships, which will function as joint appointments between the center and existing academic departments. The center also will partner with the Brookings Institution to host programs in Washington, D.C., attract visiting scholars to St. Louis, and create opportunities for interaction between Washington University faculty, students, and members of the local community.

The founding director of the center will be Wayne Fields, the Lynne Cooper Harvey Distinguished Professor of English in Arts and Sciences at Washington University; a search for his successor will be launched in January.

"The center will serve as an ideologically neutral place that will foster rigorous, unbiased scholarship and encourage conversations between diverse and even conflicting points of view," said Washington University chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. "Knowing that religious values and beliefs can either encourage or undermine civility, the center and its educational programs and scholarly research can provide a bridge between religious and political communities and will inform new kinds of academic explorations focusing on the relationships between the two. We think that's a worthy goal."