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Saturdays at Seven Conversation Series

“Boundary Pioneers” ft. Rice University’s Elaine Howard Ecklund I Saturdays at Seven – Season Three, Episode Thirty-Eight

By June 6, 2026No Comments

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In the thirty-eighth episode of the third season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Elaine Howard Ecklund, the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences and the Director of the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance at Rice University. Ecklund begins by discussing her understanding of the age in which we live – secular or post-secular, modern or post-modern. She then maps that understanding on the nature of the relationship science and religion share—a relationship she has now explored for approximately 20 years. Ecklund then shifts to talking about her own formation as a sociologist at Cornell University and Princeton University and about the discernment process that led her to accept an appointment at Rice. Her work at Rice then included a very fruitful line of research concerning the relationship science and religion share along with emerging lines of research concerning the relationship shared by faith and work and the role the practice of mentoring plays in the lives of individuals called to the academic vocation. In addition to offering details concerning the leadership she offers the Boniuk Institute, Ecklund concludes by discussing the virtues sociologists seeking to flourish in their vocation should cultivate as well as ways sociologists and the Church can be of greater service to one another in the years to come.

Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.

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Our guest is Elaine Howard Ecklund, the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences and the Director of the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance at Rice University. Thank you for joining us.

Elaine Howard Ecklund: Oh, thanks so much for having me, Todd. I’ve been really looking forward to this.

Todd Ream: Perhaps the most pronounced question defining your work is the relationship shared by science and religion. One of the cultural issues that impacts religion is the age in which we live. For example, do we live in a secular age or a post-secular age? And sociologists are usually amongst the group of scholars who sought to propose answers to that question.

To begin, if I may, how do you define secularity and then how do you define post-secularity?

Elaine Howard Ecklund: Ugh, this is like the stuff about which many books have been written, right. So now I’m going to give you just a totally unsatisfying quick answer. So we think about secularity as, you know, kind of the way in which people view religion and religious institutions. And so if people do not think that religion has a lot of power in society say it doesn’t have power over laws and institutions and organizations and how people live their lives, we think of those societies as secular.

It gets really complicated though, right. Because religion means many things to many people. And so, you know, you could have a society where, and the US is somewhat like this, where people are not, like, necessarily seeking, like, religion to oh, I don’t know, run universities or make governmental laws. And you’re like, “Oh, that’s kind of a secular society.” But then if you delve deeper, you’re like, “Oh, actually, people’s deepest religious convictions have a lot of impact on politics even though we have a secular polity.”

Or you know, there are faith-based universities, and people within universities that are not faith-based still use their religious traditions to, you know, bring to bear in the way that they see the intersection between, you know, knowledge and the rest of life. So those terms are… Well, I’m going into a lecture now, so I’m just going to pause there and let you ask a follow-up question.

Todd Ream: Would you contend then that we still live in a secular age or at some point in time have we crossed into a secular, a post-secular age?

Elaine Howard Ecklund: I’m going to err on the side of post-secularity, and let me tell you why. Because I’ve spent about the last 20 years of my career, that’s humbling to say that I’ve been in it that long but I’ve spent about the last 20 years of my career studying what people think of as the most secular institution, so, science as an institution and medicine to a lesser extent. And I found that even there in American society, there’s a whole lot of religion going on. Um, whether you think of it as conventional religious beliefs, like how much people go to church or how much they pray and things like that, or you think of it as it being religion as comprising, like, how people see their science relating to wonder and awe and religion-like conceptions.

So even in what some call the most secular of institutions globally meaning science, there’s still a lot of religion. So I do think also that we’re seeing a bit of a generational shift. Um, we’re not seeing a massive increase in church participation as, as some polls have argued recently. But what we are seeing is, I think, more of an openness among younger people to spiritual wonder and meaning. And I do think that we in the US, in the scholarly community, need to pay attention to that and what kind of harbinger it might be for things to come.

Todd Ream: Thank you. In what ways then, if any, does secularity correspond with modernity? And then the parallel question then would be, in what ways does post-secularity correspond, if at all, with post-modernity?

Elaine Howard Ecklund: I really need to get a philosopher and a historian in here too to debate me, right. So what I’m looking at, let me tell you just a little bit, tell the listeners what sociology is, right. So sociology, which is my principle field, is the study of group behaviors and group-based dynamics. And in one sense it sort of depends if you see the cup half full or half empty, right? So it seems like organizationally religion is in a bit of decline, and that some of that decline might be due to modernity.

So people no longer feel like, you know, they have to have marriage happen through a religious organization. So there was a time in our society, just to give one little, one example with some big consequences there was a time in our society where certain kinds of, like, rites of passage and ways of doing things institutionally had to happen through the religious organizations. People just wouldn’t know where to celebrate births and marriages and deaths outside of religious organizations. That is no longer the case, and other kinds of functions of religion have decreased in our society.

And I think that’s, to some extent related to modernity. We put a lot of emphasis on science to some extent. We put a lot of emphasis on reason more broadly. We put a lot of emphasis on capital accumulation and money and atomizing our time. So all of these things are, like, part of the sea which have had an impact on religion.

And yet there is also the sense that we can’t seem to fully get rid of religion, that just as we seem to… like, it seems to be breaking down and, you know, I’m not a very committed secularist personally. I mean, I’m part of a religious organization. Um, you know, my husband and I are raising our child in the Christian tradition. So, so there’s, like, ways in which I’m not fully on board, but personally.

But as a scholar you know, and I’m in conversation with scholars from all different kinds of religious perspectives themselves, and there is a kind of confusion now and just I think a wondering that modernity may not have won the day, that there’s a whole lot more religious and spiritual complexity that’s meaningful than, than we had thought, say, you know, for the past 50 years.

Todd Ream: Thank you. To add to that complexity then, if I may, before we move on to talk about some other details, in what ways, if any, has this transition between secularity to post-secularity, modernity to post-modernity then impacted the relationship that religion and science share?

Elaine Howard Ecklund: Yeah. So just to give you the listeners a little bit more context, so for about the past 20 years, I’ve been studying how science as a group of people, so remember I told you all that sociologists study groups, so how the group of people called scientists and the group of people who are religious, and then recognizing of course, that there’s people in both of those groups who embody both of those groups, right. Who are religious scientists, how they relate to one another.

And I do think that 20 years ago, even when I started this research out in 2005, that there was a real foregone conclusion that to be a scientist meant to be personally secular, that at the group level, that religion, like, never entered science, that it would be completely inappropriate to ever bring anything to do with religion into a scientific classroom or to talk about religion in a lab. There was religion going on, but at least on the front stage, people would’ve said, “No way,” that this is not something that should be happening.

And now I think the conversation has really broadened. For one thing, scientists have realized that religious people, you know, express their opinions through their votes, that they sometimes are concerned about scientists and the kind of moral values scientists have. And so that science, you know, religious people have a real impact on science as a block, and for both good and bad, and that scientists ought to be more open to the idea of discussing science with religious people. So I think there’s just an openness and outreach that’s happening in the scientific community.

And personally, there is, in my, for my studies, an increase in the diversity of people who are entering science. And so more people from different kinds of strata across American society, and I’ve studied science globally as well, and I think that’s happening more broadly in global society too, in the scientific community, there’s just a whole lot more diversity, including religious diversity, than there has been in the past.

Todd Ream: Thank you. As promised now, I want to transition to asking you a different set of questions, questions about how your sense of vocation then developed as a sociologist.

You earned an undergraduate degree in human development from Cornell, as well as a master’s and a PhD in sociology, then from Cornell. Uh, between those two degrees, you spent a year, I believe, at Princeton as a visiting fellow.

At what point did you discern that the practice of sociology would prove fundamental to how you understood your vocation?

Elaine Howard Ecklund: I wanted to be a professor probably, like somewhere in undergraduate at Cornell. Um, so truth in advertising, I’m mono school, got all my degrees from Cornell University, in part because I lived in Upstate New York and I don’t come from a family where a lot of people have a college background. And lucky for me, you know, Cornell was my hometown school. And so it, it just happens to be a really good school. I would never recommend to any child that they do this now, any high schooler, but I only applied to Cornell University. So, and boy, was I fortunate, right to get in, and this, you just wouldn’t encourage anyone to do this, but I kind of didn’t know better.

And I, you know, going to Cornell really changed my life, and I got a sense of like what it would mean to be a professor, and I kind of fell in love with the university and decided I wanted to stay there for the rest of my life. I did some other things. I did a stint in advertising. I did a stint in campus ministry, and I realized that no, I wanted to be in the classroom. I wanted to be a professor.

Then I started looking around for like what am I reading about? You know, what are the, what’s the stuff I’m naturally reading? And I was reading a lot of sociology of religion. I’d been interested from a very young age. I was raised in a very conservative religious home, and I got like wanting to analyze my past, as often happens with, you know, people who get higher education. I’m like, “What kind of tools can I, like, use to understand where I came from?” And I started reading sociology, and I’m like, “Oh, wow, the way I was raised and the kind of groups that I had exposure to just had a huge impact on my life.”

And then I got interested in studying sociology and group-based behaviors. And I’m like, “How true is this for other people?” Like did, for other people, you know, did their religious background have an impact on how they view gender roles? Or for other people, did their religious background have, you know, an impact on how they view the intersections between different racial groups for other people? And I just got like really curious about all of these group dynamics, and I realized that, you know, sociology was the discipline where you know, I could kind of find the answers to some of those questions. And as I, I just kind of fell in love with that.

Todd Ream: Yeah, yeah, great. Are there any experiences in particular that you might highlight or perhaps any mentors who played an outsized role in that discernment process?

Elaine Howard Ecklund: Yeah, so I had actually, um sadly one of my early mentors in undergraduate Richard Baer, who’s a professor at Cornell University and interestingly taught the relationship between religion and how people see environmental care. Um, and I didn’t go in to study sociology of the environment, but I was really captivated by, I was like, “Oh, religion can have an impact even on how you view environmental care,” and I had not thought of that at all. And just a really interesting man who, a very committed Christian, yet also very intellectual, and I think really encouraged me to be an intellectual, and, like, held that out. And here I was at Cornell, which is a deeply intellectual school, but I had not had anyone who noticed me as an intellectual, if that made sense. Like, sure, I’d gotten into this school, but Professor Baer was really important. Um, I want to honor him in helping me realize that I could be an intellectual.

And then there were other people in my life. Um, my aunt who helped raise me had also was in hospital administration, and, you know, she had kind of navigated a higher education and encouraged me as well. And then, then I decided I could apply to graduate school. And lo and behold, got back into Cornell University and was like, “Oh my gosh, am I ever going to get into a different school?” But it was just totally different, you know, being a PhD student there than it was as an undergraduate. I experienced a totally different side of the university, and I found lots of mentors.

And then I applied to a program and got in to spend a year at Princeton between my master’s and my PhD, and I was really helped by Robert Wuthnow, who is a well-known sociologist of religion, and also was very encouraging to me. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my primary advisor at Cornell Penny Edgell, who’s now a professor at University of Minnesota, who just encouraged me, I think, to pursue my love of sociology of religion.

I had no idea when I went in that it wasn’t necessarily popular to study religion sociologically, that this is kind of a minor discipline within the field. And you know, being able to work with Professor Edgell, it was a huge deal you know, to work with another sociologist of religion, often junior scholars who are interested in religion don’t even have anyone in their department who is interested in sociology of religion, which seems just crazy to me given the impact that religion has on our world broadly right now. And, like, you’ve got to really be sticking your head in the sand to not notice the importance of religion. Like, you have to willfully not want to see it, right?

And sadly, our discipline, I’m kinda giving a little rant right now, but our discipline has not recognized that. And so to have these mentors who really were excited about me studying religion encouraged me. Um, and there were other colleagues at Cornell as well, other faculty who were very encouraging of me studying religion in ways that, you know, even though it was outside their discipline, they were on my committee and really encouraged me and I, and I’m very thankful for all of that.

Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. Any authors who then also proved influential in an outsized way on how you came to understand the practice of sociology and/or your understanding of the academic vocation?

Elaine Howard Ecklund: There are some, I mean, I, probably to be honest you know, Robert Wuthnow’s work in, you know, religion was some of the work that, you know, had an impact on me, and his, you know, work on how religion changed in American society over time. And he really is just brilliant and has all kinds of different ways of looking at sociology of religion, you know, in terms of culture and historical forces that were, had a huge impact on me intellectually, and he’s just a lovely human being. Um, and, you know, Penny’s work where she really did work on family life and religion, you know, had an impact on me as well.

And fortunate for me I ended up being hired at Rice University in part by Michael Emerson, who’s also a well-known sociologist of religion, and we were colleagues for many years. He went off and did other things, and we’ve just now hired him back at Rice University in our policy institute, our Baker Institute. And, you know, maybe you’ll interview him for this podcast. But he is wonderful and also has been a great encouragement, and it’s a great privilege now to be his colleague again.

So there’s these folks that, you know, I got to know over the years, Korie Edwards, who’s a professor at Ohio State. Um, she and I have done a lot of, like, structural leadership things together. She’s also a scholar of racism and religion. And I have to say, you know, at some point in your career, you shift from seeing, like, seeing, like, who has mentored me, and I’m so grateful and I’m, I’m panicking right now thinking I’ve forgotten someone. And so you know, if you’re out there and you’re listening and I’ve forgotten you, it’s just because I’m anxious in the moment. Um, it doesn’t mean anything more than that.

But then you start wondering, who am I mentoring? And I am really passionate about supporting the careers of junior scholars, and I’ve had the privilege of working with so many terrific junior scholars, postdoctoral fellows, and PhD students, and some of whom, my PhD students now have tenure, so that’s humbling. But it’s that’s the privilege now.

Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask, Princeton, New Jersey, was the furthest south you’d lived prior to your transition to Rice University in Houston, Texas.

Elaine Howard Ecklund: Yes.

Todd Ream: So can you say a little bit about the discernment process that led someone who grew up in Upstate New York to make the transition then to life in Houston and at Rice University?

Elaine Howard Ecklund: Oh my gosh. So my first study, if you look at my résumé, was of Korean-American evangelicals. That’s what I did my dissertation on at Cornell. And, you know, I’ve been to Korea. Um, and what I remember when I moved to Texas, where Rice University is located, I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is like culturally more different from where I was raised than Korea is.” I mean, it just, it sort of, it’s was just so different.

And I have, you know, have grown to love Texas. I’ve grown to love Houston in particular, which has a kind of beautiful diversity. It doesn’t have the kind of natural beauty that I’m, you know, was used to in upstate New York, which is a very, you know, it’s a lush green place. Um, it’s about, you know, five hours outside of New York City. So New York City was my nearest big city, and that was quite far away. And so being in this huge, diverse city where there’s no dominant really cultural group or ethnic group.

And, you know, my child had 18 different languages spoken in elementary school. And my parents, I remember, you know, she comes home when she’s a little bitty, like a kindergarten, and she’s like, “What’s our home language?” And I’m like, “Sorry for you, our home language is English, ma’am.” You know? I mean, so it’s sort of like there’s this assumption of diversity among young people in Houston, and that was not the case where I was raised in rural upstate New York.

And it’s beautiful. It’s really beautiful, and I hope that doesn’t sound kitschy or Pollyanna-ish to the listeners, but I think it’s really true. And it’s really changed my life to live someplace where that kind of diversity, it’s not without its challenges, but that kind of diversity has been taken for granted, and there’s a kind of beauty to that.

Todd Ream: Thank you. When you think back over the arc of your career to date, what questions then, is there a question in particular? We sort of talked about larger themes that animate your work, but is there a question or a set of questions that have proven more fundamental than others?

Elaine Howard Ecklund: I think I’m very interested in, you know, how change happens in the social world, and I’ve developed this concept in some of my work called the boundary pioneer. So people who are kind of at the slight outside in social groups then, and have exposure to groups that are often in conflict with one another, like scientific communities and religious communities, can sometimes do a lot to bring peaceable relations among those groups. They can be a kind of bridge, especially if they’re respected by both groups.

And you know, I think of Francis Collins, who’s been head of the National Institutes for Health, as being one of those people who’s been so deeply involved in the scientific community as a leader and great intellectual of our time, and then also such a deep person of faith and who’s very much respected in faith communities. And those kind of people can really bring communities together. And so I’ve been interested in how individuals work across difference to bring communities together.

I’ve been interested in how the conditions under which groups that are very negative towards one another can start to become positive and develop meaningful and positive relationships. And I’ve been interested more broadly in, you know, how the scientific community differs across national contexts in terms of its relationship to religious people. So that’s kinda like some of the intellectual stuff I’ve been doing.

I’ve gotten very interested recently in religious diversity in workplaces, and how we can develop workplaces where we have meaningful pluralism religiously, without asking people to completely dumb down their religious traditions to a lower lack of, to a lowest common denominator. And I’ve written a couple of books recently on that topic with co-authors Denise Daniels and Chris Scheitle. I’ve written a book called Religion in a Changing Workplace with Oxford.

And then, and then I’ve been interested in translating research to different kinds of communities, especially Christian communities, and I’ve written a book with Denise called Working for Better: A New Approach to Faith at Work, and that’s been a whole lot of fun. We’ve been traveling around talking to different groups about that work now.

Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. That work then is expressed through nine authored and edited volumes. Six of them, if you don’t mind me grouping them this way, focus on various aspects of the intersection shared by faith, science, and as you just mentioned also, work.

When you look at the arc of those sort of six books, in what ways have the scope, and you mentioned you have a developed recently a, you know, more developed interest in work, but when you look at the arc of that, in what ways has your, you know, understanding and your pursuits changed over time?

Elaine Howard Ecklund: In the beginning when I started you know, my first book on science and faith was Science versus Religion: What Scientists Really Think, and it was about natural and social scientists and how they viewed religion. Then I thought, “Wow, there are many different ways of being a religious person,” um, you know, and I just wanted to understand how scientists viewed religion. It was a pretty descriptive book in some ways.

Then I got very interested in kind of unpacking the different ways that scientists view science, you know, and how that might have an impact on religion, and say the differences between a discipline like, you know, biology and physics in terms of their views of science and what science does in the world, and how that might shape their views of religion. I also became very curious about international questions, and I have to credit my husband in part for this.

My husband is a particle physicist who works in the CERN experiment, so we’ve spent quite a bit of time, you know, supporting his work there at CERN as he’s, you know, supported my work as well. And that was just fascinating to see that large of an international experiment. For the listeners, this is an international experiment for particle physics that’s located outside of Geneva, Switzerland, and through the piece of France that juts up against where Geneva juts up to France.

And it’s been a privilege to spend time kinda hanging out with that experiment, and it gave me a real imagination for international science and to study the differences among scientists in different national contexts. And so off I embarked, you know, with a team of nearly 100 to do an eight-country study of scientists’ attitudes towards religion.

Uh, in that work, I again was focused down on religion, but when I ended that book, it’s called Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the World Think About Religion, I got thinking I, I studied all these varieties of religion in different national contexts, but I haven’t thought much about varieties of atheism among the scientific community. It seems like there are different types of atheists. And so I started studying that topic and wrote a book with David Johnson called Varieties of Atheism in Science.

Um, I also felt like, you know, we were ignoring religious people and how they view science, and Chris Scheitle and I wrote a book together called Religion Versus Science, kind of the companion to that science versus religion book, Religion Versus Science: What Religious People Really Think. And that, I felt like that kind of rounded out, you know, I’d studied all the things that I could study related to science and religion.

But then I was very fortunate to start doing some thinking and be encouraged to do some thinking with, from church pastors actually, who said, “You know, why don’t you write a book for us and how we can explain science thoughtfully to people in our church communities when they have concerns?” And I had the chance to write a book with Brazos Press called Why Science and Faith Need Each Other: Eight Shared Values that Move Us Beyond Fear. And that was my first big outreach book. So it was research-based, but also, you know, had discussion questions, and was the kind, like extra readings, and the kind of thing that you could read like in a church Sunday school class or a small group setting or, you know, in an undergraduate classroom. And that gave me a lot of wonderful opportunities.

And so that was kind of my foray into that huge outreach, which I would say has really animated a lot of my work recently, and the reason I’m directing this institute, which is a research institute that’s also chartered to do intensive outreach in the community. And I jumped at the chance to do this because it allowed me to bring all of that together, doing the research, but then going the extra mile to really reach out into the community, which I’ve just become so passionate about.

Todd Ream: Thank you. Of the work that you’ve done and the projects that you’ve led and the ones in which you’ve participated, has one yielded a particularly vocationally satisfying answer where you think not only does this really answer an important question, but you find that it resonates with you at a deeper level than perhaps other projects? And is there one maybe where you’ve been picking away at a particular question, but you just haven’t found the answer yet, but you’re going to keep going?

Elaine Howard Ecklund: I have really loved doing this work with Denise Daniels on vocation. I mean, this may seem somewhat obvious if there’s, there may be one or two people out there who’ve read all nine of my books. So, you know, you may know this already that those two people who’ve done that. But there was a lot of privilege and just, you know, resonance, I guess, to use that that Rosa term, that I felt when I was writing this, these books on faith in the workplace.

I would say that I kind of feel called to my work, and I think my vocation to some extent is an expression of my faith. But to then interview 300 people about those topics and survey, you know, 12,000 of them and just hear all the versions of why people go into particular kinds of jobs and work and what the struggles are and the blessings are of those, of those choices or those, those pathways, you know, made me just reflect deeply on that for my own life and, you know, where higher education is going in America, what role I have in it, what kinds of responsibilities I have.

And I, I got thinking a lot about, you know, how people hold in tension their work life and the rest of their lives, and what that means for families. I’ve written a book about that as well. Um, and I also got very interested in the issue of calling. And I got very interested in the issue of rest, which may seem like sort of not the right thing to get interested in when you’re studying work, if that makes sense.

But in every occupation almost people in American society feel burned out and concerned that they are letting go of other meaningful aspects of their lives because their work lives are total institutions that demand too much. And so the end, the last chapter of the book I wrote with Denise Daniels, Working for Better: A New Approach to Faith at Work, is a chapter on rest. I can’t seem to put that down, so I hope to write about that topic perhaps because I struggle so much with it.

Um, and then the other thing I’ve become very interested in through all the work that I’ve done with scientists. So scientists I interviewed generally worked in lab environments and had mentees. I’ve developed quite a side interest in mentoring and how people are mentored and mentor others well, and what that looks like at a time in universities where, you know, universities are under attack, funding is decreasing, some universities are going away entirely, you know, society is suspicious of universities.

And so, you know, how can you keep up mentoring, which is a very much an other-focused task in a thoughtful way at a time when everyone wants to just, like, hunker down and keep their resources to themselves. What does it mean to essentially live as someone who gives away to the younger generation or the newer generation in the academy? And that’s kind of intriguing to me at a very deep level.

And then the other thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about is back to the science and faith stuff. Now, most of the things that are concerning about science to religious communities have to do with technology, and artificial intelligence technologies, human reproductive genetic technologies. And so I hope to write another book on how we understand, you know, faith and scientific technology when it comes to issues of, like, our bodies and how we care for our bodies. Um, you know, I think that there needs to be a lot more scholarly reflection on that topic too.

Todd Ream: Thank you.

Elaine Howard Ecklund: Is that too many? I, I don’t know. I sort of got going there.

Todd Ream: I, I think you’ve got the next 15 to 20 years of your career all mapped out.

Elaine Howard Ecklund: I know. And then, yeah, sadly it may be over at that point, so I’ve got to choose wisely.

Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. No, it was fascinating.

Uh, you mentioned a few minutes ago what compelled you to accept directorship of the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance. Would you say a little bit about the history of the institute and then its mission, in terms of how you understand the scope of that?

Elaine Howard Ecklund: So the institute’s been around for over a decade. It started as a center that was given by Milton and Laurie Boniuk And sadly, Laurie passed away a couple of weeks ago, so that was a very, a time of grief in our institute and, and for their family. And I had known about the Boniuk Institute. It had done a lot of research and really outreach across, you know, kind of bringing different faith groups together.

We had a new, a presidential administration come into Rice University, a new provost, and there was a lot of interest in starting research institutes, getting institutes that were existing to do more research. And our university, you know, both our previous president and our current, have really had a vision for having research contribute to decreasing religious violence and discrimination, and I think that’s a unique kind of proposition at a place like Rice. So there aren’t very many, you know, major research universities that don’t have a faith-based history that are really interested in sponsoring excellent research on religion broadly, but also doing that kind of the very particular topic of studying religious violence and religious pluralism and religious tolerance. And I was asked to lead the institute and I thought, you know, given that I’m here, I probably have a responsibility to do that.

And at the same time, as I have already said, I have been, over the past few years, just really increasing in my passion for translating research to broader audiences that can use it. I thought, you know, this might be the right time for me to be able to instantiate that. I, I had not done—I’d done a big project sponsored by the National Science Foundation on religious discrimination with Christopher Scheitle, but I had not really done work on global religious violence and global religious pluralism until my research on faith in the workplace.

And so just, it’s like all the factors kind of came together. I was already doing some research that could be reasonably attached to the institute. I had a passion to grow this structure. I also was becoming more passionate about doing outreach into the broader community both locally and globally, and I was asked. And so I, I thought this might be the time, you know, when I’m really sensing a call to this institute, and it’s been a wonderful experience. I have some fantastic colleagues in the institute. Um, and now I think there’s a lot more support in the university among faculty and staff and students for this institute than there ever has been.

Todd Ream: That’s great. Would you offer an example of a research project that you and your colleagues are pursuing, but then also an example of an outreach effort that you think sort of reflects the best of what the institute seeks to offer?

Elaine Howard Ecklund: We’re doing two really interesting things right now with research. So we have just embarked on a project in Houston, which is the most diverse cities in the country religiously. Um, and, you know, it’s really in the buckle of the Bible Belt, so some of the largest megachurches that the country has to offer, plus filled with gurdwaras and synagogues and mosques and even non-religious communities. Um, and so that has been a great natural laboratory to work in Houston.

We have a grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation to understand the conditions under which religious leaders work together across religious lines and denominational lines for civic good. So, you know, when do religious leaders put down their differences and, say, work together to help end homelessness in Houston? Or when do they work together to, you know, address political polarization? And what are the issues that they think of are the big social issues in their city? And so we’re hoping to do research and outreach with that project, which will act as a kind of model for other cities. And so very grateful for the AVDF for funding that project.

We also have been self-funding as well as with the help of some of our funding within Rice University. So meaning we’ve gotten a couple of grants from the university itself, one for Rice Global, to bring together scholars from different national contexts who are experts on religious violence and discrimination in their societies, and then to dream together about a research agenda. Like, what if we, institutes like this, join together and try to do a massive international project to address the consequences of religious violence and to talk about what a healthy religious pluralism might look like. And so we just published an article from those convenings in the journal, Religions, where we put forth a new research agenda for understanding religious violence and sponsoring healthy religious pluralism, and we’re hoping to raise money for that project.

We’re also hoping to start a project. We have a center underneath the institute called the Religion and Public Life Center, and it’s done lots of great work over the years on religion and science in addition to other topics, and we’re hoping to, to maybe even start an academic center on religion, science, health, and environment, and, and do even broader research on that topic. So a lot’s going on in the institute.

Um, probably I’ll just end by saying that one of the things I’m most proud of the Religion and Public Life Center for is that for years, it has led religious and civic leader gatherings. I’ve, I’ve led some of these in my own home. And our director right now, Todd Ferguson, is bringing together religious leaders, nonprofit leaders, together with academics, and we share a little bit of research and then talk together about how religious leaders and faith-based nonprofit leaders might use this research for their own efforts. We feed them dinner, we give them resources. So to bring in religious leaders to an academic institute like this to a program, to set up a program that’s really for them I think is just so innovative and I’m so proud of what we’re doing in that respect.

Todd Ream: Thank you. Before we close our conversation today, I wanted to ask you as a sociologist, what virtues, particularly moral and intellectual virtues, prove most important to cultivate for individuals who are seeking to flourish in this particular line of work and have accepted this kind of calling to sociology?

Elaine Howard Ecklund: There are so many. I’m actually part of a collective right now through the Veritas Scholars Forum where we’re working on a volume together about intellectual virtues for the academy. So, so it’s, it’s on my mind, and I probably won’t do that justice in these minu- minutes we have left together.

Two that jump to mind that I’m really passionate about intellectual humility. And I think if there’s one thing, you know, among many sadly that the academy is being critiqued for right now that we could kinda stand up against is that, you know, sometimes we are criticized for being too self-focused, too much about our own ends and our own desires.

And really the best academics I think are deep, have a deep sense of intellectual humility have a conviction about what they study and their findings, but are always holding open the possibility that they might learn from the other, that they might be wrong. And I think in our society broadly but in the academy in particular, we want to sponsor that kind of deep intellectual humility, a kind of convicted intellectual humility. It’s not that I need to agree with everyone or even think everyone is right, but I might always hold open the possibility that there’s another who knows more, you know, than I do.

And then I, something else I’ve been thinking about a lot is a kind of hospitality. Um, you know, intellectual communities and universities are often silos. You know, we have disciplinary silos. We have a kind of sad individualism where we get rewarded for making a name for ourself. Um, and so, you know, if you are obsessed with making a name for yourself, it’s hard to have a kind of hospitality for others. And so I think practicing the virtue of hospitality, which we can think of on many levels, literally opening our homes to others, but also, you know, opening up our ideas you know, opening our spirits to others.

Uh, we can think of ways in which hospitality is broader than just having people over for a meal, although sometimes it does start there. And I think if we can work from a space of a radical hospitality and intellectual humility, our universities would be wholly different places.

Todd Ream: Thank you. Vices then which individuals called to the practice of sociology need to be vigilant against and perhaps be prepared to address?

Elaine Howard Ecklund: I think that our studies predispose us to see some of the worst stuff in the world. I mean, we study radical inequalities, you know, the lack of ethics in the criminal justice system and the ways in which it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. We study extreme racism. We study religious violence and religious discrimination. So when you study those things, you sometimes start to feel like social change is not possible. The world can never be better. And I do think that in its worst form, that can become a kind of vice that can kill, you know, hope for a better world for future generations, for social change. And we ought to spend a bit more time really pondering, you know, using our empirical methods to try to understand social change as well.

Um, and I do think that sociology, just like other disciplines falls prey to this, you know, who’s the big man in the room, and sadly it is often a man, right. I mean, there’s a sense of you know, we’re trying to always be better than the other, make a name for ourselves, and sometimes we’re a smaller discipline. We’re a discipline that hasn’t always been fully respected by the sciences and other disciplines, and so this, we can have a predisposition to kind of getting in there and fighting.

And I think there’s a, there can be a real goodness to that, to advocacy for the discipline. Uh, the dark side of that is that it becomes then, if we’re overly focused on making a name for ourselves, it becomes hard to help others, sponsor others’ careers. Um, and I don’t want to see that, you know, see us fall into that trap. And we study the social order and the social world and, you know, we ought to be the chief among those, you know, trying to contribute to it in positive ways.

Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you.

For our final question then, I want to ask you to reflect a little bit on a couple of things that you mentioned. Earlier in the conversation, you said you had a group of pastors who came to you and asked you, you know, a set of questions and prompted you to then develop a book-length project that could be of service to the Church. Uh, you’ve had religious leaders in your home as part of this outreach.

In thinking through those lenses then, in what ways can sociologists be of greater service to the Church moving forward, and in what ways could the Church also be of greater service to sociologists?

Elaine Howard Ecklund: That’s a great question. I love that one. I do think there’s a nice record of sociologists of religion trying to actually help religious organizations. I mentioned my colleague Michael Emerson, who’s done a lot of innovative work related to racism in religious organizations. And I think in general, if we as sociologists can think about the groups we might have a responsibility to help, either because, you know, they’re our own identity groups or they’re just groups that we have a passion to help. You know, it doesn’t need to be religious groups necessarily. But I do think that sociologists of religion might have a special responsibility to do work that does challenge under certain conditions and support under certain conditions congregations.

I have been so fortunate to be part of a church recently in Houston, where our pastor is very supportive of people’s, you know, day-to-day workplace callings, and, you know, and certainly has really encouraged me and encouraged me to talk about my research and my work in church. And so I think in general, if faith leaders and pastors in particular can have a kind of openness to allowing congregants to talk about their work different kinds of work.

And if there’s a way that congregations can be less suspicious of academics, I think that sometimes I’ve, you know, experienced pain at people being very suspicious of me because of my discipline or my work. And it’s hard to ask people to, to let down predispositions and stereotypes, but if there’s a way that could happen, I think that would be helpful.

Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Our guest has been Elaine Howard Ecklund, the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences and the director of the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance at Rice University. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and wisdom with us.

Elaine Howard Ecklund: Oh, thank you. This has been a really enjoyable, enjoyable conversation.

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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.

Todd C. Ream

Indiana Wesleyan University
Todd C. Ream serves as University Professor and Executive Director of Faculty Scholarship at Indiana Wesleyan. He also serves as a senior fellow with the Lumen Research Institute and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities and as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review.

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