Christian Faith and U.S. Democracy: Past, Present, and Prospects on the Eve of America's 250th

Dr. Heath Carter | Facilitator

Dr. Heath W. Carter is the Associate Professor of American Christianity and the Director of PhD Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. He earned his PhD in United States history from the University of Notre Dame in 2012. Prior to that, he received an MA from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 2005 and a BA in English and Theology from Georgetown University in 2003.

Carter is the author of Union Made: Working People and the Rise of Social Christianity in Chicago (Oxford University Press, 2015), which was the runner up for the American Society of Church History’s 2015 Brewer Prize. He is also the co-editor of three books: The Pew and the Picket Line: Christianity and the American Working Class (University of Illinois Press, 2016), Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism (Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2017), and A Documentary History of Religion in America, 4th Ed. (Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018).

He is currently working on a new book entitled On Earth as it is in Heaven: Social Christians and the Fight to End American Inequality (under contract with Oxford University Press), which retells the story of the American social gospel. By the nineteenth century, some American Christians had come to see participation in fights against structural inequality as essential to their faith. Over the course of roughly one hundred years, stretching from 1865 to 1965, these believers — women and men, Catholic and Protestant, black and white and Latinx — cultivated a proud, if fractious, social Christian tradition that transformed not only the churches but also the nation as a whole. This books tells the story of how little-known activists, eminent theologians, radical preachers, and progressive politicians powered faith-filled movements for a more egalitarian United States of America.

Carter is an editor-at-large for William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company and the co-editor, with Kathryn Gin Lum and Mark A. Noll, of the press’s award-winning Library of Religious Biography series. He is also the senior co-editor, with Nancy J. Taylor, of the Journal of Presbyterian History. Carter serves on the advisory boards of the Louisville Institute and the Hispanic Theological Initiative. He teaches regularly in congregational contexts. He and his family are active members of Nassau Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Princeton, New Jersey.

Annette Gordon-Reed | Lecturer

Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. Gordon-Reed won 16 book prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (2008). She is the author of six books, and editor of two. She was the Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at the University of Oxford (Queen’s College) 2014-2015, and was appointed an Honorary Fellow at Queen’s in 2021. Gordon-Reed served as the 2018-2019 President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and is currently president of the Organization of American Historians. Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, and the National Humanities Medal. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the British Academy.

Cherie Harder | Panelist

Cherie Harder serves as President of the Trinity Forum. Prior to joining the Trinity Forum in 2008, Ms. Harder served in the White House as Special Assistant to the President and Director of Policy and Projects for First Lady Laura Bush. Earlier in her career she served as Policy Advisor to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, advising the Leader on domestic social issues and serving as liaison and outreach director to outside groups. From 2001 to 2005, she was Senior Counselor to the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), where she helped the Chairman design and launch the We the People initiative to enhance the teaching, study, and understanding of American history. Prior to that Ms. Harder was the Policy Director for Senator Sam Brownback and also served as Deputy Policy Director at Empower America. She holds an Honors B.A. (magna cum laude) in government from Harvard University and a post-graduate diploma in literature from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, where she was a Rotary Scholar. She is also a Senior Fellow at Cardus, an Editorial Board member of Comment magazine, a past board member of Gordon College and the C.S. Lewis Institute, a current board member of the Convergence Center for Policy Resolution and Faith and Law, and an advisory board member of the National Museum of American Religion.

Jonathan Rauch | Panelist

Jonathan Rauch is one of the country’s most versatile and original writers on government, public policy, and gay marriage, among other subjects. A senior fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington and contributing writer of The Atlantic, he is the author of eight books and many articles and has received the magazine industry’s two leading prizes — the National Magazine Award (the industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize) and the National Headliner Award. Major topics of his writing and speeches include:

• How to fight back against trolling, disinformation, canceling, and other cutting-edge propaganda tactics that seek to unmoor our country from reality—the subject of his 2021 book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth
• Freedom of speech and why it’s especially important to LGBT people and other minorities, the subject of his classic book Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought
• Why midlife malaise hits so many people — and chimps! — and how we can all do more to help, the subject of his 2018 book The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50
• Why America’s politics and government are in such trouble, the subject of his bestselling Atlantic cover article “How American Politics Went Insane” and his seminal book Government’s End: Why Washington Stopped Working
• Gay and lesbian rights, the struggle for marriage equality, and the growing debate about religious liberty, the subject of many articles and his 2004 book Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America

Jonathan is also the author of a memoir, Denial: My 25 Years Without a Soul, and books on Japan and financial-system reform. He has written many articles, on everything from government and public policy to introversion to animal rights, for publications including The Atlantic, National Journal, The New Republic, The Economist, Reason, Harper’s, Fortune, Reader’s Digest, U.S. News & World Report, The New York Times newspaper and magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, Slate, Salon, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Public Interest, The Advocate, The Daily, and others. He has appeared as a guest on many radio and television shows, including NBC’s Meet the Press and NPR’s NewsHour.

Jon takes pride in being a thoughtful, dynamic, and well prepared speaker, focused on giving sponsors outstanding value for money and communicating important and often counterintuitive ideas to his audiences in a direct, personal way. His keynote speech for the American Academy of Home Care Physicians was rated as “phenomenal” by the sponsor.

R. Marie Griffith | Panelist

Marie Griffith is the John C. Danforth Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. She served for 12 years (2011-2023) as the director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics and the editor of the Center’s journal, Religion & Politics (now ARC). Her research focuses on American Christianity, including the changing profile of American evangelicals and ongoing conflicts over gender, sexuality, and marriage. Before moving to Washington University, she served as professor of religion and director of the women and gender studies program at Princeton University, and later as the John A. Bartlett Professor of New England Church History at Harvard.

Griffith is the author or editor of seven books, including God’s Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission; Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity; Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics; and Making the World Over: Confronting Racism, Misogyny, and Xenophobia in U.S. History. Her current project, titled Bankrupt: Clergy Sexual Abuse, Institutional Power, and Trauma in American Christianity, explores abuse, coverups, and attempts at restitution across a range of Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christian contexts in recent U.S. history.

Griffith is a frequent media commentator and public speaker on a range of current issues pertaining to religion and politics.