McNamara Annual Lecture

From its inception in 1998, the McNamara Lecture has served as the Center’s flagship event, providing a platform for leading thinkers to share groundbreaking research and insights. Over the last quarter century, the Lecture has been given by some of the best scholars working on the social study of religion, including Nancy Ammerman, José Casanova, Mark Chaves, Lynn Davidman, Helen Rose Ebaugh, Michael Emerson, Meredith McGuire, Omar McRoberts, R. Stephen Warner, and Richard Wood. In depth of insight and breadth of applicability, the Lecture exemplifies the Center’s mission to combine scholarly rigor and public relevance for the common good.

In 2024, the Center was proud to host Dr. Mucahit Bilici of the City University of New York for his McNamara Lecture, titled “America’s Homegrown Islam: Making Religion Work from Imam to Chaplain.” The 2025 McNamara Lecture will be given by Dr. Ruth Braunstein of the Johns Hopkins University. An increasingly influential scholar of religion and democracy, Dr. Braunstein’s Lecture, “My Tax Dollars: The Act of Tax Paying as Sacred and Profane,” will show how citizens in value-diverse societies coalesce around shared visions of the sacred and fears of the profane.