In a diverse nation where many minority groups participate in a dominant society yet maintain their cultural differences, questions arise about how the faithful practice their religious beliefs. Should they keep their religion to themselves or shout it from the rooftops? These and other questions will be explored April 14 at the Wilson College 2008 Orr Forum on Religion. The theme of the forum is, “On Being Publicly Religious.”

A daylong series of events is planned, culminating with the Orr Lecture at 7:30 p.m. in Laird Hall, when Nancy Ammerman will present “Religious Communities and the Good of the World.” The lecture is free and open to the public. “I think Dr. Ammerman will make an argument, or at least suggest, that religious communities have a role to play in the common good. They have a contribution to make,” says David True, chair of the Wilson College Department of Philosophy and Religion. ”That doesn’t mean that religions aren’t capable of huge wrongs or can’t be divisive. But many Americans find meaning in religious communities and traditions, and they find it in diverse ways. That’s a big point for her — that American religion contains a great deal of diversity and individuality.”

Ammerman is a respected professor of sociology of religion at Boston University, who has spent much of the last decade studying American congregations. Her most recent book, Pillars of Faith: American Congregations and their Partners (University of California Press, 2005), describes the common patterns that shape the work of American's diverse communities of faith. She also wrote Congregation and Community. Prior to her work on congregations, Ammerman, whose doctorate is from Yale University, wrote extensively on conservative religious movements, including Bible Believers: Fundamentalists in the Modern World, a study of an independent Baptist church in New England, and Baptist Battles: Social Change and Religious Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention, which received the 1992 Distinguished Book award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

In addition to the Orr Lecture, several presentations, which also are free and open to the public, will be held in Allen Auditorium in Warfield Hall throughout the day with speakers including Dr. Ammerman, Rabbi Jordi Gendra-Molina of Temple Beth Shalom, Mechanicsburg, Pa.; Douglas Crawford, chair of the Wilson College Business and Economics Department.       

To learn more, visit http://www.wilson.edu/publiclyreligious or contact David True at (717) 264-4141, Ext. 3396 or mailto:dtrue@wilson.com.