Sites organized by Grantmaking Areas
Christian Faith and Life
- Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism
The Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at Notre Dame University is a leading center for the historical study of Roman Catholicism in the United States.
- Material History of American Religion Project
This project studies the history of American religion by focusing on material objects and economic themes.
- Religion, Culture and Family Project
The Religion, Culture, and Family Project centered at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago seeks to address the broad contemporary crisis in American family culture from a range of theological, historical, legal, biblical, and cultural perspectives.
- Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith
The Valparaiso Project develops ecumenical resources that speak to the spiritual hunger of our contemporaries with the substantive wisdom of the Christian faith. The Project conducts seminars, commissions books, produces video programs and website resources, and supports the innovative strategies of congregations to strengthen participation in Christian practices. This interactive website provides greater access to Project publications, including book summaries, study guides, worship resources, and discussion groups. A separate, but related, website called "Way to Live" is designed especially for youth and youth leaders.
- Way To Live: Christian Practices for Teens
Waytolive.org invites young people to meet other youth as they search for a better way to live. The site reveals what groups of teens are doing to help their communities find more faithful ways of living. Waytolive.org is about a way to live that is full of the kind of freedom and live and courage that Jesus lived and gave to his community.
- Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism
Congregational Life and Ministry
- Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College offers both rigorous scholarship and practical resources to enrich Christian worship in churches throughout North America.
- Center for Congregations
The Indianapolis Center for Congregations launched by the Alban Institute helps Indianapolis-area congregations find solutions to their pressing practical problems by connecting them with excellent resources from around the city and across the nation.
- Faith Communities Today
Faith Communities Today coordinated at Hartford Seminary brings together more than 40 participants from Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Bahai' and Orthodox Church organizations to develop cooperative congregational survey research in conjunction with the census in 2000. This project seeks creative ways to share useful information with congregations, their religious bodies, and the public, and to encourage studies of practical significance to recognize and assist the contributions of faith groups in American society.
- National Congregations Study
The National Congregations Study surveys a representative sample of America's churches, synagogues, mosques and other local places of worship. It gathers information about a wide range of characteristics and activities of congregations.
- Partners for Sacred Places
Partners for Sacred Places is the nation's only non-denominational, non-profit organization devoted to helping Americans embrace, care for and make good use of older and historic religious properties. Partners provide assistance to the people who care for sacred places while promoting a new understanding of how these places sustain communities.
- Transforming Christian Leaders
This Site at the Claremont School of Theology is a collection of resources drawn from the Web and arranged around stories about congregational life. Believing that adults learn best when they can see themselves in a story, the site offers descriptions of church situations in which church leaders see themselves and resources to answer how to decide what to do next.
- Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
Pastoral Leadership Development
- Auburn Center for the Study of Theological Education
The Auburn Center for the Study of Theological Education at Auburn Theological Seminary studies major issues in theological education to assist decision-makers in theological schools, denominations, and other settings as they make critical decisions about training future religious leadership.
- Fund for Theological Education
The Fund for Theological Education, located at the Luce Center in Atlanta, Georgia, promotes excellence in the profession of ministry by inspiring, recruiting, and supporting gifted women and men of diverse backgrounds in their theological formation.
- Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
The Wabash Center located at Wabash College seeks to strengthen and enhance education in North American theological schools, colleges and universities by initiating studies, workshops and conferences, by supporting faculty initiatives and reflection that enhance the teaching of theology and religion, by clarifying the sense of vocation in those preparing to become teachers of religion and theology, and by aiding faculty and their institutions in keeping abreast of appropriate technology for their educational programs.
- Auburn Center for the Study of Theological Education
Public Understanding of Religion
- Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture
The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture located at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) is a research and public outreach institute devoted to the promotion of the understanding of the relation between religion and other features of American culture.
- Pluralism Project
The Pluralism Project was developed by Diana Eck at Harvard University to study and document the growing religious diversity of the United States, with a special view to its immigrant religious communities.
- Polis Center
The Polis Center is a multidisciplinary, community oriented unit of Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) that works with a wide range of Indianapolis community groups, governmental agencies, businesses, not-for-profits, religious organizations, schools, and individuals. Its special interests are neighborhoods, community planning and development, religion, and heritage and culture.
- Religion & Ethics Newsweekly
Religion & Ethics Newsweekly covers top stories in religion and ethics news -- focusing on important and significant events, controversies, people, and practices of all religions, all denominations, and all expressions of faith. It is distributed to PBS stations nationwide. To complement the broadcast, RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY offers a Web companion piece. The Web site features advance information about each week's program including photos, transcripts of each segment, broadcast schedules for every city carrying the program, a monthly interdenominational calendar, an email form where users may suggest story ideas, a link to Thirteen's Pressroom archive listing previous segments, and more.
- Religion Newswriters Association
The Religion Newswriters Association is a non-profit trade association founded in 1949 to advance the professional standards of religion reporting in the secular press as well as to create a support network for religion reporters. RNA strives to help improve and encourage religion writing excellence in the secular press. The site includes links to information on religion news headlines, resources and scholarships as well as links that offers free religion story ideas and sources.
- Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture
Supportive Religious Institutions
- Fund for Theological Education
The Fund for Theological Education, located at the Luce Center in Atlanta, Georgia, promotes excellence in the profession of ministry by inspiring, recruiting, and supporting gifted women and men of diverse backgrounds in their theological formation.
- In Trust Online
In Trust magazine tells the stories of governance, administration, and finance in graduate level theological education in North America. For fifteen years, it's been reporting on the people, places, and shifting circumstances of seminaries. Full information about In Trust's services and resources is available at In Trust Online, where free searchable archives and community features make learning about and from one another easy, provocative, and even a little fun.
- Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts
The Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts centered at Valparaiso University is a national project intended to generate a national conversation for the renewal and deepening of the corporate vocation of church-related colleges and universities and to provide a setting for the formation of younger scholars who wish to pursue their vocational commitments at such institutions.
- Fund for Theological Education
Other Related Sites
Agencies providing Grants or Fellowships
- Association of Theological Schools
The Association of Theological Schools provides Lilly Theological Research Grants that are designed to aid the scholarship and publication of faculty members at ATS schools. The program encourages scholarly research that will contribute to theological education, inform the life of the church, develop a greater public voice for theology in society, collaborates with other academic disciplines, and offer new perspectives on Christianity in a pluralistic setting.
- Louisville Institute
The Louisville Institute at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary is a Lilly Endowment program for the study of American religion. The Institute seeks to enrich the religious life of American Christians and to encourage the revitalization of their institutions by bringing together those who lead religious institutions with those who study them, so that the work of each might stimulate and inform the other.
- Association of Theological Schools
Centers for Education and Research
- Alban Institute
The Alban Institute connects laity, clergy, and executives to resources that address the difficult issues facing congregations, such as visioning and planning, congregational growth, welcoming and involving new members, congregational dynamics when clergy leave, managing conflict in congregations, exploring the role of lay leadership, and financial crises.
- Auburn’s Center for the Study of Theological Education
Auburn's Center for the Study of Theological Education is the only research institute in the nation focusing specifically and comprehensively on theological education. Established in 1991, it identifies key challenges, explores them in depth, and shares the results with theological schools, religious communities and other educational institutions.
- Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals
The Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College supports research on evangelical Christianity in the United States and Canada in order to help evangelicals develop a mature understanding of their own heritage and to inform others about evangelicals' historical significance and contemporary role.
- Alban Institute
Research Resources
- American Religion Data Archive
The American Religion Data Archive (ARDA) provides access to quantitative data on American religion and allows comparisons across data files. The ARDA collection includes data on churches and church membership, religious professionals, and religious groups (individuals, congregations and denominations).
- Hartford Institute for Religion Research
The Institute is committed to providing research-based information on the social scientific study of religion in a way that makes this research usable for religious leaders and the general public.
- National Congregations Study
The National Congregations Study surveys a representative sample of America's churches, synagogues, mosques and other local places of worship. It gathers information about a wide range of characteristics and activities of congregations.
- National Study of Youth & Religion
This web site provides resources for people interested in what role religious practices play in forming the lives of American youth and how religious communities provide resources and skills that can enhance the lives of young people. It also seeks to encourage research on American youth and religion.
- Wabash Center Guide to Internet Resources for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
This Guide developed by the Wabash Center at Wabash College provides a selective, annotated guide to a wide variety of electronic resources of interest to those who are teaching or studying religion and theology at the undergraduate or graduate level.
- American Religion Data Archive