Description

In June 2019, the Luce Foundation’s board approved a Theology Program grant of $750,000 to support a project at Arizona State University’s Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict (CSRC) on “religion, journalism, and democracy in a post-truth era.” Building on an initiative supported by the Luce/ACLS program in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs, the project seeks to reinvigorate theology as a civic resource for examining truth claims and to sharpen the capacity of scholars and journalists to speak publicly about truth. Working closely with the University’s School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, and with its Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, CSRC is establishing an interdisciplinary collaboratory, a collaborative space in which scholars and journalists can deliberate together, and jointly create new platforms for thinking and communicating about the pursuit, meaning, discovery, and recovery of truth. The project aims to cultivate new and renewed understandings of the relationship between truth and democracy, and to expand understanding of how religious actors, ideas, and institutions contribute to—or undermine—democratic culture in a “post-truth era.” It will attend, in particular, to the resources of theology for thinking deeply, analyzing critically, and reflecting ethically on the project of truth-seeking. With the support of a COVID Emergency Grant, CSRC will pursue two goals that extend beyond the work the Luce Foundation is already supporting: First, the Center will create a program for dispensing small grants to local organizations that provide relief services to marginalized communities in Arizona and adjacent areas. This support will focus on a number of at-risk, underserved, and disproportionately impacted populations in and around Arizona, including: American Indians (particularly the Navajo Nation); migrant, DACA, and mixedstatus families from Mexico and other Latin American countries; and refugees and immigrants from other parts of the world (including Africa and the Middle East). Second, the Center will support programs and platforms for chronicling and publishing accessible, public-facing stories about these vulnerable communities. Many of these stories will be archived as a featured collection in “A Journal of the Plague Year: An Archive of COVID-19,” an online platform initiated by ASU faculty and curated by graduate students in history. A third goal, which folds into the efforts being supported by the Foundation’s 2019 grant, will involve drawing from stories that come out of the project to understand what the crises and responses of different marginalized communities reveal about larger social and democratic concerns. This will include attention to the importance of truth in democratic life and of trust in government, both of which are necessary to respond effectively to a pandemic.