The University of Indianapolis held its tenth annual Richard M. Fairbanks Symposium on April 9, this year’s topic being “Civic Spirit: Religion and Leadership in Indianapolis.”
The event is put on through a collaboration between the university and Indiana Humanities, and planning begins well before the actual day of the event. According to Edward Frantz, chair of the department of history and political science and director of the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives, they try to find a topic that is relevant to civic leadership. This year, Frantz said, they wanted to focus on how religion and leadership interact, especially in Indiana.
“What we try to do together with our partners, Indiana Humanities, is to think through vital issues for the greater metropolitan area,” Frantz said. “We had not tackled the idea of religion and leadership, and in particular, thinking through both the positives of the ways in which faith and religion shape people’s interaction with communities, and then also the limits of that and the ways in which polarization and politics is both exacerbated by at times and overcome by at other times.”
Frantz said he believes religion’s connection to politics is especially relevant after the 2024 election. He said that when planning the symposium, he had the most recent election and the polarization that it has brought in mind.
“Any year you have an election year in your lifetime, if you’re planning big public events, you’re wise to think through what might be happening then,” Frantz said. “In doing so, we thought … about not just what divides us, but what can unite us, bring us together and call us, hopefully to serve.”
Associate Professor of Political Science Gregory Shufeldt said he thinks the topic of religion and politics will be especially relevant to a college campus, as students are navigating their own relationships with faith while becoming independent. Shufeldt spoke with Professor of American Democracy at the University of Notre Dame David Campbell during the symposium.
“Historically, college is a time where students walk away from the faith tradition that they might have been raised in,” Shufeldt said. “This is a time where students can choose and kind of explore their faith tradition on their own, and so some students learn more about and actually get more religious or spiritual in college.”
At the symposium, Shufeldt and Campbell spoke about how religion and politics have intersected historically, how they currently intersect and ways for both religious and nonreligious individuals to promote a healthy civic life in the future. Shufeldt said religion and politics often collide in Indiana, especially since Indiana has both a Christian and Republican majority.
“In Indiana, we do have a dominant political party, and we also have a dominant religious group,” Shufeldt said. “Overwhelmingly, more Indiana residents self-identify as Christian than other groups, so how do those that don’t self-identify as Christian see themselves as being Hoosiers?”
Shufeldt said to answer this question and understand other perspectives, people across different religious backgrounds and denominations need to be in conversation with one another.
