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Dr. Amy L. Sherman, one of the country's leading scholars on the role of faith-based organizations in society, has agreed to be a Senior Fellow at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion. Sherman is currently the Director of the Center on Faith in Communities at the Sagamore Institute. She previously held a similar post at the Hudson Institute, a public policy think tank, and has been a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Sherman plays key leadership roles in the national Faith and Service Technical Education Network (FASTEN), where she seeks to uncover what's working for faith-based groups at the grassroots level and communicates lessons learned to policymakers and practitioners. [Read More...]

The University of Notre Dame recently announced a $3 million research grants project on the Science of Generosity, supported with funding from the John Templeton Foundation and open to social science researchers worldwide. This is a reminder that the deadline for letters of inquiry (LOIs) proposing research on generosity in the human and social sciences is April 1,2009 (postmarked). [Read More...]

The Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR) recently partnered with scholars from Peking University, Purdue University, Renmin University, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to organize and sponsor the Beijing Summit on Chinese Spirituality and Society: A Symposium on the Social Scientific Study of Religion. [Read More...]

Dr. Byron Johnson, co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR) at Baylor University, will present at the White House National Conference June 26-27th in Washington DC.

Research findings were made public at a conference in Washington, DC this May and were released in a report called For a New Thrift: Confronting the Debt Culture. The report addresses the linked problems of overindebtedness, lack of savings, and growing inequality in the United States.A multiyear initiative of the Institute for American Values, under the leadership of David Blankenhorn, this John Templeton Foundation grant supports interdisciplinary research and public education to examine the history of thrift as an American value. It also aims to bring together leaders from across the political spectrum in a national conversation on thrift. Byron Johnson, Co-Director of ISR is among the distinguished scholars and leaders from across the political spectrum, who jointly authored, For A New Thrift. This publication powerfully addresses the linked problems of overindebtedness, lack of savings, and growing inequality in the United States. [Read More...]

Wall Street Journal Article, Honoring Thy Fathers, written by ISR Non-Resident Scholar, W. Bradford Wilcox, [Read More...]

Dr. Philip Jenkins, Professor of History at Pennsylvania State University, gave a LECTURE, Friday, April 18th 2:00 pm, Bennett Auditorium, Baylor campus entitled The Lost History of CHRISTIANITY, he reveals a vast Christian world to the east of the Roman Empire and how the earliest, most influential churches of the East - those that had the closest link to Jesus and the early church - died. In this paradigm-shifting book... [Read More...]

The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion has released four articles written by the Baylor ISR research team based on the findings of the Baylor Survey of Religion: American Piety in the 21st Century[Read More...]

Jay Hein, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, keynoted a forum on "FACTS:A Faith-Based and Community Solution to Reduce Domestic Violence." The forum highlighted the FACTS program, a one-year rural pilot program that is a collaboration between staff at the Office of Victim Services (OVS) in Helena, Mont., and the principal project staff at the Program on Prosocial Behavior, a unit of the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR).[Read More...]

The Wall Street Journal, July 14, 2007 -- Late last year, a Swedish hotel guest named Stefan Jansson grew upset when he found a Bible in his room. He fired off an email to the hotel chain, saying the presence of the Christian scriptures was "boring and stupefying." This spring, the Scandic chain, Scandinavia's biggest, ordered the New Testaments removed. In a country where barely 3 percent of the population goes to church each week, the affair seemed just another step in Christian Europe's long march toward secularism. Then something odd happened: A national furor erupted.[Read More...]