Religion, Secularism and Politics:

RCC Symposium 2009

About our Theme:  Religion, Secularism and Politics

The interplay of religion and politics has become a particular area of concern and interest over the past decade.  What is the proper relationship of religious ideas to the modern state?  Should religion play a role in speaking to our ideas for government?  What limits should be placed upon one or the other sphere?  How do we go about managing the difficult moral issues of concern to the state and to people of faith?

These are the sort of questions addressed by Dr. Jean Bethke Elshtain over a career writing and speaking on difficult moral and ethical issues and the proper relation of citizens to their governments.  In her most recent book, Dr. Elshtain explores the way in which our conceptions of sovereignty rooted in religious reasoning and tradition affect government.  She exposes the danger of sovereignty demanded at the level of the state and the self and calls for a responsible understanding of sovereignty rooted in reasoned discourse.  Dr. Elshtain will speak on these and other concerns.  We hope you can join us.

Symposium Speaker

Dr. Jean Bethke Elshtain 

Jean Bethke Elshtain is Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago and Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Chair in the Foundations of Freedom at Georgetown University.  She is a leading expert in the fields of public ethics, religion, and political theory.  Dr. Elshtain’s work as a public intellectual and scholar is widely recognized and she is a frequent commentator on issues of religion, ethics, and public life in both popular and scholarly journals, including Dissent, The New Republic, and the Journal of Democracy.  She is the author of numerous books, including Sovereignty:  God, State, and Self (2008), Just War against Terror (2003), Who are We? (2000), Democracy on Trial (1993), Women and War (1987), and Public Man, Private Woman:  Women in Social and Political Thought (1981).  Dr. Elshtain is married, and has four children and three grandchildren.