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About

Mission

The Center on Lived Religion (COLR) grows out of the Lived Religion in the Digital Age project (2018-2024) in order to enrich, expand, and advance the study of lived religion at Saint Louis University. The mission of COLR is to provide the institutional support to continue the study of lived religion and an institutional structure for interfacing with lived religion in the St. Louis metropolitan area while broadening the focus beyond the periodization of “the digital age.” In short, COLR is organized as a research, teaching, and public scholarship clearinghouse whose mission is to develop more robust inquiry into and representation of religion as it is lived across the range of human experience and identity, both in our immediate communities and beyond.

Attuning to religion as it is lived—embodied, practiced, negotiated, applied, contested, activated, reimagined—yields insights into human experience while also casting stark light on the interpretive categories that have shaped the academic study of religion for generations. Such attention requires shifting analytic focus and points of dialogue from official teachings, creeds, and authorized texts of traditions to the messy, contradictory, and imperfect fragments of embodied humanity. We seek not to replace but to enrich the important work of theological and religious study at SLU by forming an inherently interdisciplinary community of scholars and other professionals. To date, COLR is the only academic center in the United States exclusively dedicated to the study of lived religion.

COLR’s work sits at the nexus of academic research, public humanities, digital humanities, and inclusive pedagogy. Specific Center activities will include convening academic colloquia, collaborating with campus and community partners in various public humanities and public scholarship efforts (art exhibits, community festivals, school partnerships, media collaborations, etc.), developing digital tools to promote the study and understanding of religion, and supporting graduate and undergraduate students in their formation as people for others.

Leadership

  • Rachel Lindsey, Ph.D., Director
  • Pauline Lee, Ph.D., Director of Public Humanities
  • Adam Park, Ph.D., Associate Director of Research
  • Dru Swadener, Ph.D., Program Coordinator

Advisory Board

  • Elizabeth Block, Ph.D. (Associate Professor, Theological Studies) 
  • Kate Holdener, Ph.D. (Assistant Professor, Computer Science) 
  • Nico Sassi, Ph.D. (Assistant Professor, Theological Studies) 
  • Kayla Dang, Ph.D. (Assistant Professor, Theological Studies) 
  • Morgan Hazelton, Ph.D. (Associate Professor, Political Science) 
  • Peter Martens, Ph.D. (Professor, Theological Studies) 
  • Kate Moran, Ph.D. (Associate Professor, American Studies) 
  • Daniel Smith, Ph.D. (Associate Professor, Theological Studies) 
  • Petruta Lipan, Ph.D. (Director, Museums and Galleries) 
  • Timothy Dulle, Ph.D. (Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Ignatian Service) 
  • David Brinker (Director, Museum of Contemporary Religious Art) 
  • Claire Gilbert, Ph.D. (Associate Professor, History) 
  • Patrick Cousins, PhD (Campus Ministry)