ABOUT LIZ
ACADEMIC INSIGHTS for EVERYDAY SEEKERS
Liz Bucar is a University of Chicago trained religious ethicist, professor of religion at Northeastern University, and prolific public scholar. Her popular writing has appeared in The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, Teen Vogue, and The Wall Street Journal, and she is the author of four books, including the award-winning Stealing My Religion and Pious Fashion. Her writing, teaching, and public lectures cover a wide range of topics—from religion and health care to the politics of religious clothing—but generally focus on how a deeper understanding religious difference can change our sense of what is right and good.
I’ve spent the past twenty-five years immersed in the academic study of religion. I first got interested in religion after college, while working on human rights issues. It didn’t take long to realize that without religious literacy, I couldn’t fully understand what the heck was going on. From civil rights to health care to nationalism, religion—its ideas, leaders, institutions—is everywhere. So I headed to graduate school and eventually earned an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School.
If religion is power—and it is—then we need to understand how it works, where it’s hiding, and who gets to wield it.
My initial goal was to understand how religion influences political and social institutions. But along the way, something more personal—and unexpected—happened: studying religion began to shape my own understanding of well-being and purpose. I explore both kinds of insights in my work:
How does religion shape our world? And how might religion help us imagine a more fully human life?
MY MOTTO IS AND ALWAYS WILL BE
“RELIGION SHAPES ALL OF US,
even if we don’t believe.”
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