2017 Marty Forum: Winnifred Fallers Sullivan

Winnifred Fallers Sullivan is the recipient of the 2017 Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion. Sullivan is professor and chair of religious studies, and affiliate professor of law, at Indiana University at Bloomington. Sullivan’s work focuses on the phenomenology of religion under the modern rule of law, and she is widely known for her critical studies of American law and jurisprudence about religion. She is the author of four books: Paying the Words Extra: Religious Discourse in the Supreme Court of the United States (1994), The Impossibility of Religious Freedom (2005), Prison Religion: Faith-based Reform and the Constitution (2009), and A Ministry of Presence: Chaplaincy, Spiritual Care, and the Law (2014); and the co-editor of three volumes: After Secular Law (2011), Varieties of Religious Establishment (2013), and The Politics of Religious Freedom (2015). Beyond the religious studies guild, Sullivan’s public scholarship on religion and her work as an expert witness have had an important impact in courtrooms, prisons, military units, and government offices from city halls to the State Department. In this year’s Marty Award Forum, Laurie Patton, president of Middlebury College, will join Sullivan for an extended public dialogue about Sullivan’s life and work. Erik Owens, Boston College, presiding Panelists: - Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Indiana University - Laurie Louise Patton, Middlebury College The forum was recorded at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion on November 19 in Boston, Massachusetts.