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UA prof noted nationally for his expertise on religion and politics
To speak at Akron Interfaith Council roundtable tomorrow
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: October 23, 2012
Turn on CNN or tune in to NPR and if the topic is how politics intersects with religion, chances are the reporter will be quoting John Green Ph.D., head of The University of Akron’s Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics.
Green, a senior research adviser at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, proves to be one of the country’s “go-to” experts when the press wants to discuss these types of controversial subjects.
In fact, a Google search for “John Green political scientist” comes back with over 200,000,000 hits.
CNN’s Dan Gilgoff, who founded and runs the network’s “Belief Blog” on CNN.com, said that Green, “is one of the only scholars in the country with the knowledge and flexibility to be able to weigh in on that intersection (between religion and politics). He is probably the most qualified academic who can speak to that.”
Gilgoff points out that Green is as comfortable with the religious implications of the current campaign, including Mitt Romney’s membership in the Mormon Church, as he was in 2002 when the “values voters” came to the fore.
Green’s flexibility allows him to translate cold statistics into understandable information and puts him in contrast to many speakers on religion and politics who may be more rigid defenders of their own faith, said Gilgoff.
Rather than being a dry academic or someone with a religious or political agenda, Green is down to earth in a way that people listening to NPR, watching CNN, or reading the New York Times can relate to.
“He gives meaning within the world with real people and real news events,” Gilgoff said.
This is quite a lofty perch for a man who says he basically had no ambition at all except to teach political science at Akron when he arrived in town in 1986.
Green received his doctorate in political science from Cornell University in 1983 and his bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Colorado in 1975. His doctoral dissertation concentrated on campaign finance. In his youth, his father worked for the Weather Bureau and Green lived in various places from Oklahoma to Peru.
He took his first academic job, he said, at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.
“When I got to Greenville, a new group called the Moral Majority had just started,” he said. “It seemed like a fun subject to study. One of my colleagues said that we had better write something quickly because these kinds of movements don’t last.”
That study launched him on a career of studying the topic of the influence of religion on American politics, a topic that hitherto had received scant attention before that in political science, he said. With those studies published, the press began calling and asking questions, since he was one of the few people who had published studies on the subject up to that time.
Since then, of course, more and more people have taken up this study, in all of the social sciences.
“It is now covered more,” said Green. “But they still call, and I still try to be helpful.”
When he began to take on his academic studies of the subject of the confluence of religion and American politics in the early 1980’s, he found, he said, that the two topics were, “a lot more related to one another than what was obvious.”
When The University of Akron opened up the Bliss Institute, he applied for, and got, the position as the institute’s first full-time academic employee. “I was excited,” he said. “I was going to have the chance to study real politics.”
He intended to spend a quiet life teaching students, he said, but six weeks after he arrived here, the institute’s founder, Vernon Cook, died.
Green was asked to step into Cook’s position as administrative head, in addition to his academic duties. “It was unfortunate that Vern died,” he said. “I didn’t really want the administrative position.” Even so, he took the position and has held it ever since.
The Bliss Institute now has six full-time and about that many part-time faculty. members. “It is a fairly big organization,” said Green.
The institute has made a notable effort to cooperate academically with other university colleges, and particularly with the law school, he said.
The Bliss Institute and the law school co-sponsor a joint degree which, when completed, gives the graduate both a law degree and a master’s degree in applied politics (a MAP degree). The combined degree is called J.D./MAP.
That program, said Green, “has worked out really well. We have about six people in it now, and it continues to grow.”
People who are interested in applying their law degrees in the political sphere tend to be particularly attracted to the program. Many people who go to law school, he said, want to work in the public sector, including entering politics themselves.
Akron Interfaith Council roundtable: Who Does God Want You To Vote For?
Nationally, of course, Green is associated with his opinions on the impact of religion on politics. For the most part, he said, he concentrates on U.S. politics, but does occasionally study the topic in other countries.
Locally, he also finds an outlet to engage in those discussions from time to time.
Green will be the keynote speaker at a roundtable sponsored by the Akron Interfaith Council entitled Who Does God Want You To Vote For? This discussion will be held on Oct. 24 at the First Congregational Church of Akron, 292 E. Market St. at 7 p.m.
“This will be a panel discussion with representatives of various faith traditions,” he said. Questions will be taken from the audience, after Green’s initial presentation. The title of the seminar is deliberately provocative and controversial, giving local people the opportunity to interact with one of the country’s leading experts on the topic.
Admission to the roundtable is free, seating is limited and registration required. Online registration is at www.akroninterfaithcouncil.org.
Green’s own religious affiliation is with the United Methodist Church—a denomination which, he points out includes both George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton.
Green will speak on three topics: the rate of growth of religious diversity; how that religious diversity connects with politics and how he sees people applying their spiritual values to politics. Religion’s role in political strategy will also be under discussion.
Religious values are applied to politics individually, said Green.
In addition to numerous academic papers, Green is the co-author of The Bully Pulpit: The Politics of Protestant Clergy; Religion and the Culture Wars: Dispatches From the Front, and The Diminishing Divide: Religion’s Changing Role in American Politics. In addition, he is co-editor of The State of the Parties, now in its fifth edition, Multiparty Politics in America and Financing the 1996 Election.