In his fourth appearance at Chautauqua Institution, the founder and president of the Public Religion Research Institute Robert P. Jones will conclude a week for the Interfaith Lecture Series on “Race and the American Religious Experience” at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy.
Jones first participated in the afternoon platform during a week on “A Crisis of Faith?” in 2017. In conversation with journalist Bill Moyers, he discussed population decreases among white evangelicals, and what a possible end of white Christian America meant for a shared sense of national identity.
It’s a question Jones has dedicated much of his career to answering. Most recently, he’s the author of the New York Times-bestselling The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future. Pluralism, race, religion and politics all factor heavily into his work. His other books include White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, which won a 2021 American Book Award, and The End of White Christian America, which won the 2019 Grawemeyer Award in Religion.
Jones discussed The End of White Christian America in conversation with Eboo Patel, founder of Interfaith America, at Chautauqua in 2018.
“Despite their overwhelming identification with Christianity, African-Americans have consistently been considered second-class citizens for most of the 20th century even as the definition of whiteness was being expanded to include other groups,” he said then. “It clearly left them out.”
Jones holds a Ph.D. in religion from Emory University, a Masters in Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Accolades include Emory University’s Graduate Division of Religion’s Distinguished Alumnus of the Year in 2013. Currently, he serves on the national program committee for the American Academy of Religion and is a past member of the editorial boards for the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and Politics and Religion, a journal of the American Political Science Association.
