You can tell I am running behind when I am posting 2024 predictions in March! Well, better late than never. I was collaborating with the folks at USC’s CRCC to think through what religious and social trends might await in 2024. Here are our predictions (details in link):

1. Faith-Secular Partnerships Reignite 21st Century Movements for Progressive Change
2. LA City Council Races Will Bring Racial Tensions Back to the Surface
3. Disability and Inclusion Warrant More Serious Conversation for Many American Congregations
4. Self-care as the New Religion
5. Friendship and Community Becomes Commodified
6. Blockbuster AI Movies Prompt Questions on What it Means to Be Human

What are some of yours?

In an election year and with primaries underway, more and more folks are weighing in on how Catholics will vote, or how they approach political issues more broadly. There is much talk of polarization among Catholics, and in some ways this is accurate, but in theological matters, Catholics remain very much united.

The Politics and Religion Journal recently published a special issue called “Catholics and Contemporary American Politics“; my thanks to Dr. Corwin E. Smidt for his editorial leadership! It is filled with helpful analyses, and you can read my article, “Polarization? Identifying What Divides and Unites American Catholics” to explore this through a national survey of 1500+ Catholics. Here is the abstract to give you a taste:

Polarization among American Catholics has been a subject of both scholarly and media attention. Using a nationally representative survey of over 1500 Catholics, the first part of this article explores the extent to which race, gender, generation, and commitment to Catholicism shape polarization among Catholics; these different characteristics affect Catholics’ political and civic beliefs and practices to varying degrees. The second part of the article parses Catholics into their political party groupings–Democrat, Republican, and Independent–to determine the ways party affiliation affects Catholics’ understanding of non-political religious beliefs and practices. The analysis reveals that political divisions are evident among some of the Catholic subgroupings, but that theological unity nevertheless prevails across party lines.

I am a few days late getting the news to you, but on the Feast of St. Francis, Dr. Geoffrey Karabin’s book, Pandemic Reflections: Saint Francis and the Lepers Catch Up with COVID, was released! It is a great collection that explores the connections between St. Francis’s encounter with the leper and our recent pandemic. The back cover blurb reads:

St Francis of Assisi, one of the most acclaimed and enduring of saints, is particularly significant when reflecting upon the COVID pandemic. Francis lived, and ministered, amid a leprosy pandemic. How he lived in relation to that pandemic makes him a source of insight to as well as a potential critic of contemporary responses to COVID. In turn, one can use COVID to question Francis. Did he exhibit a harmful form of religious devotion, perhaps fanaticism, by exposing himself and others to a lethal pathogen? This edited collection examines a highly visible and impactful religious figure with the intent of bringing him into conversation with one of the defining issues of the early 21st Century.

I was very happy to contribute a chapter that explored the ways the pandemic unfolded in Africa–which revealed a lack of justice and mercy from the global community–as a contrast to Francis’s encounter with the leper. If you order it from the publisher’s website, you can use the code FRANCIS33 to receive 33% off. Enjoy!