The Forum is pleased to join with Columbia University’s Center on African-American Religion, Sexual Politics and Social Justice (CARSS) to present The Question of Faith in Contemporary Black Life, a virtual event coinciding with the release of a new Pew Research Center study, Faith Among Black Americans. The study, which will be published on February 16th, is the Center’s most comprehensive, in-depth attempt to explore religion among Black Americans. Its centerpiece is a first-of-its-kind nationally representative survey of 8,660 Black adults featuring questions designed to examine a range of Black religious experiences.
The February 18th launch event, which will be livestreamed by The Forum, will be the first public review of this important work. Two of the study’s lead researchers, Besheer Mohamed and Kiana Cox, will open the event with a presentation of their key findings. They will be joined by a panel of speakers for a roundtable discussion moderated by Professor Josef Sorett of Columbia University. The conversation will examine the significance of the study for understanding the current landscape of religion in Black life and in the nation as a whole. An audience Q&A session will conclude the evening’s program. Questions may be submitted into consideration via Slido.
Notably, the Pew study will be published on the same day that a new PBS series, The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This is Our Song, will also debut. The two-part series from renowned scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. will serve as a timely complement to this roundtable discussion of the new Pew study.
Featured guests:
- Dr. Besheer Mohamed, Senior Researcher, Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C.
- Dr. Kiana Cox, Research Associate, Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C.
- Rev. Dr. Leslie D. Callahan, Pastor, St. Paul’s Baptist Church, Philadelphia, PA
- Dr. Marla F. Frederick, Professor, Candler School of Theology, Emory University; President, American Academy of Religion
- Dr. Mark Anthony Neal, Professor and Chair, African and African American Studies, Duke University
- Dr. Josef Sorett, Professor, Departments of Religion and African American and African Diaspora Studies; Director, Center on African-American Religion, Sexual Politics and Social Justice (CARSS), Columbia University
In addition to the Center on African-American Religion, Sexual Politics and Social Justice, this event is co-sponsored by Columbia’s Division of Social Science, Faculty of Arts and Sciences; the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies; the Institute for Research in African-American Studies; the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life; the Religion Department; and Union Theological Seminary.
For more information about this event's featured speakers, please visit The Forum's website.