In recent decades, religious organizations have increasingly been entering into partnerships with governments to oversee a vast array of social programs. These new connections are leading Evelyn Bush, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology, to ask questions about power and individual rights.

“I’m interested in the shifting boundary between religion and state, and the historical circumstances that allow for religion to exert more influence in politics,” she said. “What leads religions to have more or less power? What are the consequences in people’s day-to-day lives?”

To understand this, Bush, who is also associate chair for graduate studies, focuses on religious engagement with large institutions. Recently, she trained her sights on the U.S. State Department, where instances of religious persecution have been documented since Congress passed the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998. Although the social movement leading up to the bill’s passage focused heavily on protections for Christian missionaries, the State Department’s documentation covers a far greater diversity of religious groups around the world.

“Human rights reports cover every kind of human rights infraction you can think of—torture, political and civil rights, labor issues, religious freedom issues, anti-Semitism, women’s rights, children’s rights and the rules of war,” she said. “But issues of religious freedom have their own office within the human rights bureau. I think it’s worth asking why.”

Bush noticed that, in reports on religion-based violence, a pattern emerges. Abuses of individuals are classified as violations of “religious freedom” if they are committed by governments or by external religious groups. When they are committed by individuals within a religious community, however, they are still classified as violations of human rights, but they are more often covered in the “secular” human rights reports, and referred to more in terms of “culture” rather than “religion.”

This is consistent with a more general pattern that Bush sees in our social discourses. “If you bring up a practice that—by western standards—is considered a violation of human rights, people are quick to say, “Oh, but that’s not due to religion, that’s their culture.” she said. “Why are people so quick to protect the religion from taking responsibility for whatever this practice might be, when we all know that religion and culture are pretty closely intertwined? What exactly is at stake when we make these distinctions?”

One thing to remember about the “it’s their culture” argument, she said, is that there’s an underlying assumption—sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit—that people who are participating in their cultures are doing so consensually. “But it’s difficult to talk about consent and choice for women if they are born into religious environments where, through generations, religious beliefs and practices have been predominantly interpreted by men,” she said. “Assumptions about choice become especially problematic in religious cultures where women are denied scriptural authority at the same time that they are not free to simply change their religions.”

People need not look outside of the United States to find religious groups attempting to exercise authority over others, including working to influence government policy, she said. Same-sex marriage, for instance, is a topic on which domestic religious groups have focused a great deal of attention. In these cases, “Religious organizations involved in politics are not aiming to convince people to adhere to their religion through persuasion, speech or soft power tactics. They’re trying to get people to conform to their principles by harnessing the power of the state,” Bush said.

“I’m opening up a broader question about what the full implications are of this movement,” she said. “The relationship between religion and government has always been there, but these increased efforts to move into the public sphere raise questions about who has power in political processes.”

One way to look at the behavior of religious movements, she noted, is through a framework known as the religious economies model, which starts with economic assumptions about human behavior, including religious behavior.

“This is not to say that I think religions are intrinsically similar to material goods. Rather, I like the market model because it helps us to think about religions as not only having a spiritual component, but also being competitive and having an interest in expanding,” she said.

The aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, which has caused tension between various charitable groups that traveled to Haiti to help, provides a good example of what sometimes happens when a “market” becomes open to new competitors.

As Bush noted in another forthcoming paper, “U.S. Foreign Policy and Religious INGO Participation in Human Rights,” classic missionary organizations are no longer as prevalent as they once were, because now they take the form of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

“They’re neither just missionaries nor just relief workers,” she said. “They’re this hybrid form of organization,” and they vary widely in their approaches to evangelizing.

Bush notes that, to understand competition, it is still important to consider the state, and the kind of “religious freedom” that states encourage. U.S. policy encourages competition in a free market ofideas.

“If we take the individualist model of religious freedom, in which everyone opens their religious markets to allow free conversion and evangelism, that leads to an interesting economic question: What type of religion is the most likely to succeed in that kind of setting or market?” she said.

“An institutional economic sociologist would say that the groups with the greatest resources would prevail. In many countries, Christians benefit from open religious economies, because they’ve got media, schools, churches and other institutions through which they disseminate their norms. So they have an advantage in countries that are opening their religious markets.”

The event honors the work of the faculty in teaching, research and service, and recognizes individual professors for outstanding performance in those areas.

This year’s winners were:

• David Chabot, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology, recipient of the Undergraduate Teaching Award in the Natural Sciences;
• Evelyn Bush, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology and associate chair for graduate studies, awarded the Undergraduate Teaching Award in the Social Sciences; and
• Matthew Maguire, M.F.A., professor of theatre and visual arts and director of the Fordham theatre program, recipient of the Undergraduate Teaching Award in the Arts and Humanities.

Maguire, an actor, director and playwright, also delivered the evening’s lecture, “Wild Man,” which was part performance and part analysis of his current one-man show of the same name.

The two-time Obie winner characterized his work as an exploration of the question, “How can we all get more wild?”

“A play is a ride on a runaway stallion,” he said. “Plays are vehicles to transport us to places we would not otherwise go—places of danger, places of abandonment.” It is the job of a playwright, Maguire said, to guide an audience through such wild terrain and return them safely.

Maguire metaphorically danced his way through first-person accounts of some wilder recollections from his childhood, young adulthood and up to, and including, the preparation of the one-man show itself—in which Maguire challenged himself to finish it in just three weeks for a set premiere.

Among Maguire’s wilder recollections were a bloody schoolyard brawl, a restaurant confrontation with a Mafioso and an IRA bomb scare.

Drama itself, Maguire said, may be the artist’s way of striving to safely understand why humans possess primal instincts such as the desire to fight and to kill.

But Maguire balanced his more worldly events with sublime moments that included waking up in a sunlit church pew to sounds of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and once feeling touched by grace when allowed to hold a host and chalice in a Mass with his parish priest.

“There are many wild moments that are ordinary,” said Maguire. “If we look for them, we will find that [creative]kernel we can all tap into.”

Maguire said that the one-man show, which was well received by critics, provides him with a new chance—a ‘wildness’—each time he performs in the presence of a new audience.

“Stopping terrifies me,” said Maguire. “As you see, I run a theatre program. I balance a budget. I have a family. I try to be responsible. These are not the works of a wild man, and yet I desperately yearn to hang on to that wildness.”

Equally important, said Maguire, is to inspire students inside the classroom to find their own sense of freedom.

“That is our goal,” added Maguire. “To bring the students into this place of sacred wildness too. Someplace alive, with a pulse.”

The evening was sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences.