Annual Events
Founders Annual Lecture
Every year faculty and graduate students select the Founders Annual Lecturer to address campus and the larger community. The topic of this lecture focuses on a contemporary issue at the intersection of religion, politics, and culture.
Established in honor of faculty who assisted Eugene Webb, the founding chairman, in establishing and developing this nationally regarded program.
Lecturers and Topics
2016 Kathryn Lofton, Yale, “Religion and Corporate Culture.”
2014 Randall Balmer, Dartmouth, “His own received Him Not; Jimmy Carter, Progressive Evangelism and the Religion Right.”
2013 Tanya Luhrmann, Stanford University, “Understanding the Evangelical Experience of hearing God.”
2012 Matthew Sutton, Washington State University, “Why the Anti-Christ Matters in American Politics in 2012.”
2011 Michael Sells, University of Chicago, “Holocaust, Armageddon, and the Clash of Civilizations.”
2010 Mark Lilla, Columbia University, “Separation of Church and State.”
2008 David Domke, University of Washington, “Religious Politics in America: Why the 2008 Presidential Election May Change Everything for Everyone.”
2008 Martin Riesebrodt, University of Chicago, “Globalization, Religion, and the Clash of Civilizations.”
2007 Joseph Price, Whittier College, “The Superbowl as a Center of American Pilgrimage.”
2006 Martin S. Jaffee, “Remember Amalek! Patterns of Judaic Memory and the Politics of Contemporary Judaism.”
2005 Mark Juergensmeyer, University of California, Santa Barbara “Iraq and the Global Rise of Religious Violence: A report from Baghdad.”
2004 Charles Keyes, University of Washington, “Monks, Guns, and Rice: Theravada Buddhism, Political Violence, and Social Injustice.”
2003 Frank Conlon, University of Washington, “Back to the Future or Forward to the Past? Reflections on Fanaticism, Fundamentalism and Faith in Modern Asia.”
2002 Jere Bacharach, University of Washington, “The Dome of the Rock and Early Muslim Jerusalem”.