Video of talk: https://mediaspace.bucknell.edu/media/t/1_q0fglfow
Video of related Bucknell Diversity Symposium session on “How to Help People of Faiths Belong Better at Bucknell: Secular Privilege at a Secular University”: https://mediaspace.bucknell.edu/media/1_7xuo8382
Culture and the Constitution: The First Amendment’s “Free Exercise”of Religion and Elite Anti-Christian Bias Today
Tues. March 28, 7 p.m., Bucknell Hall
The US Supreme Court in the 2022 Kennedy case ruled on school prayer issues that highlight tension in American culture between the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion and increasingly dominant secular views, which often correlate with anti-Christian bias in the global West. Sociologist George Yancey of Baylor University will address his research on such bias, and tension between it and the “free exercise” tradition of the U.S. Constitution. Prof. Yancey is author of Compromising Scholarship (Baylor University Press), which explores religious and political biases in academia; What Motivates Cultural Progressives (Baylor), which examines activists who oppose the Christian Right; There is no God (Rowman and Littlefield), which investigates atheism in the United States; and So Many Christians, So Few Lions (Rowman and Littlefield), which assesses U.S. “Christianophobia” today. He also is co-author of Investigating Political Tolerance at Conservative Protestant Colleges and Universities (Routledge) and of Prejudice in the Press?: Investigating Bias in Coverage of Race, Gender, Sexuality and Religion (McFarland), and among other writings authored an article in the Journal of Contemporary Religion on “Is Christianity Still the Dominant Religion in the United States?” The focus of this event will also relate to a campus discussion in the Bucknell Diversity Symposium on March 31 on “How to Help People of Faiths Belong Better at Bucknell: Dealing with Secular Privilege at a Secular University.
Prof. Yancey’s talk is part of the “Culture and the Constitution” series hosted by the Bucknell Program for American Leadership, a Bucknell faculty association, and is generously sponsored by Bucknell alumni in the Open Discourse Coalition, in support of Bucknell values encouraging “different cultures and diverse perspectives” (from the Bucknell mission statement). About the series: The US Constitution in many ways serves as a symbolic Venn diagram between culture and government in America, in place of -old-style monarchy; a focus today for both unity and division over historical memory and social aspirations. In this sense it functions like a “national novel” in which Americans often find themselves to be both characters and readers. This ongoing series seeks to shed light on the relation of the Constitution to culture in the twenty-first century, especially through the lens of recent controversial SCOTUS decisions, while helping to bring balance to the spectrum of views available on campus and in the local community. Previous programs in the series have focused on the Dobbs decision and abortion, and on the Bruen decision and gun rights.