Religion in the Academy
The Religion in the Academy (RITA) project focuses on the many ways that religion and spirituality (broadly construed) can enhance learning at colleges and universities. The RITA project is co-directed by Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen, and has been significantly supported by the Lilly Endowment Inc. The Jacobsens are frequent speakers and workshop leaders for colleges and universities across the country.
Project Overview Douglas "Jake" Jacobsen Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen Contact Information No Longer Invisible: Religion in University Education Other Books	Douglas "Jake" Jacobsen (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Distinguished Professor of Church History and Theology at Messiah College in Grantham, PA. With wide-ranging interests encompassing American and global religiosity, Jake is the award-winning author of Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement (University of Indiana Press, 2003) and of The World's Christians: Who They Are, Where They Are, and How They Got There (Wiley/Blackwell, 2011). Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen (Ed.D., Temple University) is Director of Faculty Development and Professor of Psychology at Messiah College in Grantham, PA. A former public school counselor, Rhonda has been the recipient of both national and campus teaching awards and has received several grants from the John Templeton Foundation to support her efforts to bring science and religion into dialogue in the classroom.
	Jake and Rhonda have collaborated on three books: Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation (Oxford University Press, 2004); The American University in a Postsecular Age (Oxford University Press, 2008), which won the Lilly Fellows Network Award for best book on religion and higher education; and No Longer Invisible: Religion in University Education (Oxford University Press, 2012).
	Contact Information Jake: djacobse@messiah.edu Rhonda: rjacobse@messiah.edu 717-796-1800 ext. 3000 Religion in the Academy Project Messiah College One College Avenue, Suite 3008 Mechanicsburg, PA 17055
	No Longer Invisible: Religion in University Education Drawing on conversations with hundreds of professors, co-curricular educators, administrators, and students from institutions spanning the entire spectrum of American colleges and universities, the Jacobsens illustrate how religion is constructively intertwined with the work of higher education in the twenty-first century. No Longer Invisible documents how, after decades when religion was marginalized, colleges and universities are re-engaging matters of faith--an educational development that is both positive and necessary. Religion in contemporary American life is now incredibly complex, with religious pluralism on the rise and the categories of "religious" and "secular" often blending together in a dizzying array of lifestyles and beliefs. Using the categories of historic religion, public religion, and personal religion, No Longer Invisible offers a new framework for understanding this emerging religious terrain, a framework that can help colleges and universities--and the students who attend them--interact with religion more effectively. The stakes are high: Faced with escalating pressures to focus solely on job training, American higher education may find that paying more careful and nuanced attention to religion is a prerequisite for preserving American higher education's longstanding commitment to personal, social, and civic learning.
	No Longer Invisible has been the focus of discussions at a variety of types of college and universities--public, private religious, and private non-religious. For example, the Jacobsens have recently lectured at Oberlin College and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), whose chapel inspired the cover art for the book, as seen in the photo at left.
Selected Media Links for No Longer Invisible	The Daily Beast (23 Dec 2012) Inside Higher Education (25 Oct 2012) OUP blog (10 Sept 2012) Metro News (26 August 2012) United Methodist News Service (12 July 2012)
Table of Contents for No Longer Invisible	Introduction: Religion within Higher Education Part I: Context 1 Religion's "Return" 2 The History of Religion in American Higher Education 3 Trail Markers in a Time of Transition 4 A Framework for Better Questions Part II: Content 5 Religious Literacy: What should an educated person know about the world's religions? 6 Interfaith Etiquette: What are appropriate ways to interact with those of other faiths? 7 Framing Knowledge: What assumptions and rationalities--secular or religious--shape the way we think? 8 Civic Engagement: What values and practices--religious or secular--shape civic engagement? 9 Convictions: In what ways are personal convictions related to the teaching and learning process? 10 Character and Vocation: How might colleges and universities point students toward lives of meaning and purpose? Conclusion: Religion and the Future of Higher Education
Praise for No Longer Invisible	"This volume is a wise, sophisticated, eminently readable, and profoundly important contribution to the literature of higher education in America. The Jacobsens eloquently and persuasively shatter the wall that has too often precluded the serious examination of how intimately religion and higher education interact." --Lee S. Shulman, President Emeritus, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching "An intelligent introduction to perhaps the most confused and contested issue on university campuses today -- religion." --Patricia O'Connell Killen, Academic Vice President, Gonzaga University "No Longer Invisible is a hugely valuable book and a highly enjoyable read." --Eboo Patel, Founder and President, Interfaith Youth Core
	The American University in a Postsecular Age For much of the twentieth century, it was assumed that higher education was and ought to be a secular enterprise, but that approach no longer suffices. The culture has shifted, and contemporary college and university students are increasingly bringing religious and spiritual questions to campus. In response, college and university leaders are exploring anew the relationship between religion and higher education. The American University in a Postsecular Age grapples with key questions: --How religious or irreligious are faculty and students today? What level of religious literacy should be expected from students? --Can religion be allowed into the classroom without being disruptive? --Should colleges and universities help students reflect on their own faith? --Is religion antithetical to critical inquiry? --Can religion have a positive role to play in higher education? This is a state-of-the-art introduction to the national discussion about religion and higher education. Leading scholars and top educators express a wide spectrum of opinions that reflect the best current thinking. Introductory and concluding essays by the editors describe the postsecular character of our age and propose a comprehensive framework intended to facilitate ongoing conversation.
	Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation This book enters a lively discussion about religious faith and higher education in America that has been going on for a decade or more. During this time many scholars have joined the debate about how best to understand the role of faith in the academy at large and in the special arena of church-related Christian higher education. The notion of faith-informed scholarship has, of course, figured prominently in this conversation. But, argue Douglas and Rhonda Jacobsen, the idea of Christian scholarship itself has been remarkably under-discussed. Most of the literature has assumed a definition of Christian scholarship that is Reformed and evangelical in orientation: a model associated with the phrase "the integration of faith and learning." The authors offer a new definition and analysis of Christian scholarship that respects the insights of different Christian traditions (e.g., Catholic, Lutheran, Anabaptist, Wesleyan, Pentecostal) and that applies to the arts and to professional studies as much as it does to the humanities and the natural and social sciences. The book itself is organized as a conversation. Five chapters by the Jacobsens alternate with four contributed essays that sharpen, illustrate, or complicate the material in the preceding chapters. The goal is both to map the complex terrain of Christian scholarship as it actually exists and to help foster better connections between Christian scholars of differing persuasions and between Christians and the academy as a whole.
	The World's Christians: Who they are, Where they are, and How they got there (by Douglas Jacobsen) This well-organized and comprehensive introduction to global Christianity illuminates the many ways the world's Christians live their faith today. Utilizing the best available sources to produce an up-to-date profile of demographic trends in the Christian population, this volume blends history, sociology, anthropology, and theology to create a rich, multi-layered analysis of the world Christian movement. "This balanced and comprehensive overview of global Christian realities is the single best introduction to world Christianity that I have ever read." --Dale T. Irwin, President, New York Theological Seminary "Douglas Jacobsen has written a remarkably thoughtful, insightful, lively, and near-comprehensive account of the sprawling, vivid, internally plural, and wildly complex phenomenon of world Christianity." --R. Scott Appleby, Professor of History and Director of Kroc Institute, University of Notre Dame

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