Bio

Evan Stewart is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston and associate editor of the journal Sociology of Religion. He earned a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Minnesota and a B.A. in Political Theory and Social Policy from Michigan State University’s James Madison College. His research examines religious change, belonging, and diversity in public life. His RSDR fellowship will support the preparation of a book manuscript. Using decades of survey and administrative data, this book challenges the assumption that rising religious disaffiliation and spirituality are detrimental to the health of American democracy. Instead, it argues that these changes have only recently accelerated the religious pluralism long mythologized in American culture and that pluralism can sustain civic engagement in new ways.