News and Events

American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell

American Grace is a major achievement, a fascinating look at religion in today’s America. Unique among nations, America is deeply religious, religiously diverse and remarkably tolerant. But in recent decades, the nation’s religious landscape has been reshaped.

America has experienced three seismic shocks, say Robert Putnam and David Campbell. In the 1960s religious observance plummeted. Then, in the 1970s and 1980s a conservative reaction produced the rise of evangelicalism and the Religious Right. Since the 1990s, however, young people, turned off by that linkage between faith and conservative politics, have abandoned organized religion entirely. The result: growing polarization. The ranks of religious conservatives and secular liberals have swelled, leaving a dwindling group of religious moderates in between. At the same time, personal interfaith ties are strengthening. Interfaith marriage has increased, while religious identities are increasingly fluid. Putnam and Campbell show how this denser web of personal ties brings surprising interfaith tolerance, notwithstanding the so-called “culture wars.”

American Grace is based on two of the most comprehensive surveys ever conducted on religion and public life in America. It includes a dozen in-depth profiles of diverse congregations across the country, which illuminate the trends described by Putnam and Campbell in the lives of real Americans.
Nearly every chapter of American Grace contains a surprise about American religious life.

For more on this visit AmericanGrace.org

Rooney Center Welcomes Ricardo Ramirez to Faculty

Professor Ramirez comes to Notre Dame from the University of Southern California. His research interests include state and local politics, political behavior, and the politics of race and ethnicity, especially as they relate to participation, mobilization, and political incorporation. His current projects include field experiments on the effects of elite mobilization efforts of Latino voters and on the role of gender and ethnicity on career paths in state legislatures since 1990. Welcome Professor Ramirez!

Pizza, Pop, and Politics: Midterm Elections and Immigration

Sponsored by the Center for Social Concerns and co-sponsored by the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy

Pizza, Pop, and Politics: Immigration
Thursday *October 7 * 6:00 p.m.
Geddes Hall, B034-036

Speakers include:
Jimmy Gurule, Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School
Kevin Appleby, Migration and Refugee Services, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Hear discussions on the Midterm Elections coming up in November exploring the pressing immigration questions of this campaign season. Enjoy stimulating political discussion over free pizza and pop.
Sponsored by the Center for Social Concerns.

Co-sponsored by the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy, Department of American Studies, Department of History, Multicultural Student Programs and Services, College Democrats, College Libertarians, College Republicans, Student Government, and Pi Sigma Alpha.

Voter & absentee registration deadlines are fast approaching! For help registering to vote in the midterms, visit http://bit.ly/NDVotesGuide or contact Evan Thompson.

Upcoming NDVotes Pizza, Pop, and Politics in Geddes Hall:

Wednesday, October 27, 6:00 pm: Health Care
Tuesday, November 9, 6:00 pm: Election Analysis

Related series that the Center is cosponsoring (visit http://msps.nd.edu/ for more information):
Wednesday, October 13, 7:00 pm, Carey Auditorium, Hesburgh Library: The Immigration Debate with Enrique Morones
Tuesday, November 2, 3:00 pm, Location TBD: The Native Impact on American Politics with Bill Miller

Rooney Center To Honor JFK Election Anniversary in NYC (November 2010)

Shattering the Stained Glass Ceiling: Fifty Years After the Election of America’s First Catholic President

Sponsored by the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy, and the College of Arts and Letters

2:30 – 4:00 PM, November 19 2010, New York Sheraton
(reception to follow)

When John F. Kennedy ran for the presidency, he encountered resistance because of his Catholic faith. Public opinion polling at the time revealed that roughly 1 in 4 Americans said they would not vote for a Catholic. In winning the election, Kennedy shattered the “stained glass ceiling;” the public today is widely accepting of Catholic politicians. What are the lessons to be learned from Kennedy’s historic election victory? What are the parallels between resistance to Kennedy’s religion in the past and the “religion problems” faced by some politicians in the present?

A roundtable featuring:

E.J. Dionne, syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, frequent media commentator, author of Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right, columnist for Commonweal, and University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at Georgetown University.

John DiIulio, Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion, and Civil Society, and Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania. He served as the first director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

John McGreevy, Dean of Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters, author of
Catholicism and American Freedom: A History and Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth Century Urban North.

Robert Putnam, Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvards’ Kennedy School of Government, author of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community and, with David Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (to be published in October 2010).

The roundtable will be moderated by David Campbell, Director of Notre Dame’s Rooney Center, John Cardinal O’Hara, CSC Associate Professor of Political Science, and author (with Robert Putnam) of American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (to be published in October 2010).

2010-11 McCullough Scholarships Awarded (September 2010)

The Rooney Center for American Democracy is proud to announce the 2010-2011 recipients of John and Sandra McCulllough Scholarships in Journalism and Government. Congratulations to:

Adam Cowden
Quoc-Sy Doan
Sara Felsenstein
Raymond Gallagher
Amanda Gray
William Haley
Amanda Koziel
Mary Madden
Patrick McDonnell
Michael O’Brien
Meggie O’Keefe
Courtney Piehl

Rooney Center Hosts Inaugural Conference (October 2009)

  • The Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy hosted its inaugural conference this past October 4-6, 2009. The conference, titled “The Change Election? The 2008 Presidential Election and the Future of American Politics,” featured leading scholars from Notre Dame and other universities across the country. For more information on the conference, including a list of participants and a conference panel schedule, click here.

God and the Founders published by Cambridge University Press (July 2009)

Rooney Center Welcomes Two New Faculty Members (June 2009)

  • The Rooney Center welcomes two new affiliated faculty members beginning in the 2009-2010 academic year: Geoffrey Layman, a scholar of religion and American politics, and Vincent Phillip Muñoz, a scholar of constitutional law and religious liberty.

Griffin Receives Emerging Scholar Award (May 2009)

  • John Griffin was given the Emerging Scholar Award (with Brian Newman) by the Midwest Political Science Association in April 2009.

Recent Published Research of Notre Dame faculty and students (August 2009)

Political Women and American Democracy, edited by Christina Wolbrecht, Karen E. Beckwith, and Lisa Baldez, published by Cambridge University Press (March 2008)

  • Political Women and American Democracy contains a series of essays that originated at the May 2006 Program in American Democacy conference of the same name. Edited by conference organizers Christina Wolbrecht, Karen E. Beckwith, and Lisa Baldez, the volume provides a critical synthesis of scholarly research by leading experts in the field.

$10 million Rooney Foundation gift to support Center for American Democracy (March 2008)

  • The current Program in American Democracy will be replaced by the new Rooney Center for American Democracy, made possible by a generous gift from the Francis and Kathleen Rooney Foundation. New hires, faculty and graduate student research, and programs for undergraduates will be funded by this exciting new Center. Article