Description

Earlier this year, Appalachian State University submitted a proposal to the Theology Program, seeking support for a project focused on “civically engaged religious studies in the public university.” Invited through the Theology Program’s annual RFP for research universities, the proposal was ultimately declined. The challenges it framed nonetheless helped seed additional conversations that led to the submission of a new proposal for the smaller grant being recommended here.
Like other university-based projects funded recently by the Theology Program, Appalachian State’s proposal focuses on the challenges of public-facing or “public-focused” work. In doing so, it joins several existing efforts at public universities (including UC-Berkeley, University of Virginia, Ohio State University, Indiana University Bloomington, Arizona State University, the University of Alabama, and others). 
Unlike many of these other projects, however, Appalachian State proposes to focus squarely on undergraduate religious studies programs (which has not generally been a central focus of the Theology Program’s grantmaking). Situating its work historically, and attending both to the development of the field of religious studies and to the current state of higher education, the project would be in certain respects exploratory and experimental. At the same time, the proposal identifies clear expectations for project participation, and neatly states simple yet appropriately open anticipated outcomes. 
The proposal’s critical attention to approaches to religious studies that have often “equated academic and secular, and ceded the public arena almost wholly to religious groups and institutions” is broadly in keeping with the Theology Program’s focus on supporting projects that creatively examine received assumptions about religion, secularity, and public culture. 
This would be the Luce Foundation’s first grant to Appalachian State University.