Description

Founded in 1867 as the Centenary Biblical Institute, by the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Morgan State University was designated last year, by an act of the state legislature, as Maryland’s preeminent public urban research university.  A historically black institution, the University’s campus is based in a residential area of northeast Baltimore.  Drawing on its urban setting and public identity, Morgan proposes to launch a new Center for the Study of Religion and the City (CSRC).  The Center will focus primarily on scholarly and public engagement with Baltimore’s diverse religious communities, and will collaborate with a variety of community partners, including the Walters Art Museum, the Black Church Food Security Network, and the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies (ICJS), an independent nonprofit research organization that seeks to advance interreligious dialogue and understanding.
In partnership with ICJS, the Center will support the Imagining Justice in Baltimore Program, a yearlong fellowship bringing together 25 local civic and community leaders for sustained interreligious study.  In 2013, the Institute—formerly the Institute for Jewish and Christian Studies—expanded its mission to include Islam, and its resident scholar of Islam will serve as an affiliate at CSRC, teaching courses and participating in other project activities. Other ICJS scholars will also participate in the Center’s work.
As a complement to its community engagement work with ICJS, the Center will organize a series of collaborative public theology projects that seek to develop innovative theological engagements with the city.  These projects will bring Morgan faculty and students into sustained contact with colleagues at other local colleges and universities, including Johns Hopkins University and the Maryland Institute College of Art, resulting in the development of new courses and facilitating the establishment of collaborative public programming.  Small grants will help incentivize curricular development, while also supporting discrete individual and group research projects on religion and the city.
In addition to funding these activities, the Luce Foundation’s grant would provide support for the Center’s director, for a two-year postdoctoral fellowship, and for a range of further public and academic programming though the Center—including an annual conference, regular colloquia and research workshops.  Working with the Center’s director, the postdoctoral fellow will contribute to various project activities, while also conducting independent research and writing.  Two small advisory committees—one national and one local—will help guide the Center’s launch and oversee the project’s ongoing work.  Finally, in consultation with a range of other faculty members at Morgan and elsewhere, and with the new Center as a base, the director and postdoctoral fellow will seek to lay the groundwork for the establishment of a graduate program in religious studies, which would represent the first such program offered at a public institution in Maryland.