Skip to main content
Back to LUC.edu
McNamara Center
Request Info Visit Apply

People

‌‌Director

Fr. Patrick Gilger, SJ – Director, 2023-present

Rev. Patrick Gilger, S.J. is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Director of the McNamara Center for the Social Study of Religion at Loyola University Chicago. His first book, The Subject of Public Religion (University of Notre Dame Press, Forthcoming) examines how religious practices can shape democratic citizens. A Jesuit priest with graduate degrees in philosophy and theology, Fr. Gilger received his Ph.D. in 2021 from the New School for Social Research, where he was awarded the Alfred Schutz Prize in Philosophy and Sociology. His scholarly work has appeared in the Journal of Religion and Society and the European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, with work forthcoming in A Quarter Century of Public Religions: The Sociology of José Casanova. Beyond academia, Fr. Gilger is an award-winning author whose writing has appeared in Vox, The Dispatch, La Civiltà Cattolica, and America, where he serves as Contributing Editor for Culture. His essay “Litany for a Pandemic” received the New York Press Club Award in 2021. A frequent media commentator, he has appeared on CNN News Central, Fox 32’s Good Day Chicago, and been interviewed on NPR. In spring 2025, Fr. Gilger was appointed Research Fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs.

Faculty Fellow

  • Elfreide Wedam

Postdoctoral Fellow

  • Dr. Fatema Zohara

Graduate Fellows

  • Eyyup Yilmaz
  • Madelyn Shoemaker

Emerita

  • Rhys H. Williams – Director, 2009-2023
    • Rhys H. Williams served as the longest-tenured director from 2009 until his retirement in 2023. Williams, a Professor of Sociology who joined Loyola University Chicago in 2009 from the University of Cincinnati, led the center for approximately 14 years. During his tenure, the center remained active, hosting the Chicago Area Group for the Study of Religious Communities (CAGSRC), sponsoring the McNamara Lectures series, and overseeing major research projects including the Youth and Religion Project and the Religion, Immigration, and Civil Society in Chicago Project.