Podcasts about liberal religion book culture

Religious identities have shifted dramatically in the last quarter century. But how, and it what ways? Is religion as we once knew it dying in the U.S.? Or are people finding other ways of expressing the same kinds of needs for affiliation and meaning in different forms? What do people really mean when they say they are spiritual but not religious? Or religious but not affiliated with any traditional communities or institutions?This panel discussion, held on October 25, 2025, centered around what recent trends might tell us about the future of faith and belonging in American life. Our panel of experts, moderated by Bushman Chair Laurie Maffly-Kipp, explored one of the most communitarian traditions, the Mormon faith, as well as other American religious affiliations and spiritual identities.Visit our website to learn more.PanelistsRosemary Avance is Assistant Professor of Media and Strategic Communications at Oklahoma State University. Her research focuses on the interplay between social dynamics, communication technologies, and identity formation across diverse domains. Avance's recent book, Mediated Mormons: Shifting Religious Identities in the Digital Age, examines case studies of practicing and former Latter-day Saints to understand how these individuals relate to the church, the internet, and modernity during our media-saturated age.Matthew Hedstrom is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He specializes in religion and culture in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly examining the intersections of American modernity and Protestant and post-Protestant religious modernity in the United States. Within this field, Professor Hedstrom studies the rise in spirituality among Americans who aren't tied to particular religious institutions, as explored in his 2012 book The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century, and his popular undergraduate course: “'Spiritual But Not Religious': Spirituality in America”.Jana Riess is an author, editor, and senior columnist for Religion News Service. Her written works have primarily focused on the intersections of American religion with popular culture, ethics, and society. Riess's most recent book, The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church (Oxford University Press, 2019) discusses the faith practices and institutional distrust of Millennial Mormons. She is currently writing a follow-up book, based on her research with Benjamin Knoll, about the Mormon faith crisis and changing understandings of belonging among Latter-day Saints.ModeratorLaurie Maffly-Kipp is the Richad Lyman Bushman Chair of Mormon Studies at the University of Virginia. She is a distinguished scholar of American religious history and has authored numerous influential works on Mormonism, religion in the American West, and African American religious history. Over the past few decades, Professor Maffly-Kipp has become an influential interpreter of Latter-day Saint history and participated in shaping the field of Mormon Studies. She is also a former president of the American Society of Church History and the Mormon History Association.

Expressions of religious belief through popular media are a regular occurrence in our contemporary age. But the circulation and negotiation of religious identities in public contexts has a fairly long history in American culture. Matthew Hedstrom, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, looks beyond the church to determine how religious liberalism was popularized through mainstream book culture. In The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2012) he examines mid-century middlebrow society at the intersection of protestant liberalism, therapeutic culture, and American consumerism. Through an examination of resources such as book clubs, reading programs, key authors, bestsellers, and new publishing initiatives in religion, he argues that American spiritual life during the mid-twentieth century happens through religious commodities. In our conversation we discussed social practices of reading, William James, publishing companies, effects of the World Wars, mysticism, psychology, consumerism, Jewish and Catholic voices, a turn to the East, and the intersecting religious trajectories of the early twentieth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Expressions of religious belief through popular media are a regular occurrence in our contemporary age. But the circulation and negotiation of religious identities in public contexts has a fairly long history in American culture. Matthew Hedstrom, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, looks beyond the church to determine how religious liberalism was popularized through mainstream book culture. In The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2012) he examines mid-century middlebrow society at the intersection of protestant liberalism, therapeutic culture, and American consumerism. Through an examination of resources such as book clubs, reading programs, key authors, bestsellers, and new publishing initiatives in religion, he argues that American spiritual life during the mid-twentieth century happens through religious commodities. In our conversation we discussed social practices of reading, William James, publishing companies, effects of the World Wars, mysticism, psychology, consumerism, Jewish and Catholic voices, a turn to the East, and the intersecting religious trajectories of the early twentieth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Expressions of religious belief through popular media are a regular occurrence in our contemporary age. But the circulation and negotiation of religious identities in public contexts has a fairly long history in American culture. Matthew Hedstrom, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, looks beyond the church to determine how religious liberalism was popularized through mainstream book culture. In The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2012) he examines mid-century middlebrow society at the intersection of protestant liberalism, therapeutic culture, and American consumerism. Through an examination of resources such as book clubs, reading programs, key authors, bestsellers, and new publishing initiatives in religion, he argues that American spiritual life during the mid-twentieth century happens through religious commodities. In our conversation we discussed social practices of reading, William James, publishing companies, effects of the World Wars, mysticism, psychology, consumerism, Jewish and Catholic voices, a turn to the East, and the intersecting religious trajectories of the early twentieth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Expressions of religious belief through popular media are a regular occurrence in our contemporary age. But the circulation and negotiation of religious identities in public contexts has a fairly long history in American culture. Matthew Hedstrom, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, looks beyond the church to determine how religious liberalism was popularized through mainstream book culture. In The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2012) he examines mid-century middlebrow society at the intersection of protestant liberalism, therapeutic culture, and American consumerism. Through an examination of resources such as book clubs, reading programs, key authors, bestsellers, and new publishing initiatives in religion, he argues that American spiritual life during the mid-twentieth century happens through religious commodities. In our conversation we discussed social practices of reading, William James, publishing companies, effects of the World Wars, mysticism, psychology, consumerism, Jewish and Catholic voices, a turn to the East, and the intersecting religious trajectories of the early twentieth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Expressions of religious belief through popular media are a regular occurrence in our contemporary age. But the circulation and negotiation of religious identities in public contexts has a fairly long history in American culture. Matthew Hedstrom, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, looks beyond the church to determine how religious liberalism was popularized through mainstream book culture. In The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2012) he examines mid-century middlebrow society at the intersection of protestant liberalism, therapeutic culture, and American consumerism. Through an examination of resources such as book clubs, reading programs, key authors, bestsellers, and new publishing initiatives in religion, he argues that American spiritual life during the mid-twentieth century happens through religious commodities. In our conversation we discussed social practices of reading, William James, publishing companies, effects of the World Wars, mysticism, psychology, consumerism, Jewish and Catholic voices, a turn to the East, and the intersecting religious trajectories of the early twentieth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Expressions of religious belief through popular media are a regular occurrence in our contemporary age. But the circulation and negotiation of religious identities in public contexts has a fairly long history in American culture. Matthew Hedstrom, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, looks beyond the church to determine how religious liberalism was popularized through mainstream book culture. In The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2012) he examines mid-century middlebrow society at the intersection of protestant liberalism, therapeutic culture, and American consumerism. Through an examination of resources such as book clubs, reading programs, key authors, bestsellers, and new publishing initiatives in religion, he argues that American spiritual life during the mid-twentieth century happens through religious commodities. In our conversation we discussed social practices of reading, William James, publishing companies, effects of the World Wars, mysticism, psychology, consumerism, Jewish and Catholic voices, a turn to the East, and the intersecting religious trajectories of the early twentieth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Expressions of religious belief through popular media are a regular occurrence in our contemporary age. But the circulation and negotiation of religious identities in public contexts has a fairly long history in American culture. Matthew Hedstrom, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, looks beyond the church to determine how religious liberalism was popularized through mainstream book culture. In The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2012) he examines mid-century middlebrow society at the intersection of protestant liberalism, therapeutic culture, and American consumerism. Through an examination of resources such as book clubs, reading programs, key authors, bestsellers, and new publishing initiatives in religion, he argues that American spiritual life during the mid-twentieth century happens through religious commodities. In our conversation we discussed social practices of reading, William James, publishing companies, effects of the World Wars, mysticism, psychology, consumerism, Jewish and Catholic voices, a turn to the East, and the intersecting religious trajectories of the early twentieth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices