Get to know Emma Crossen and Matters of Religion

Growing up in Terre Haute, I looked forward to the Sundays when my family was on donut duty. We would leave a little earlier for church on those mornings and stop on the way at Square Donuts to pick up the standing order of three dozen and deliver them to the church’s basement kitchen. Then, while my dad went upstairs to choir rehearsal, I’d help my mom and sister cut each donut in half so there would be plenty to go around when folks gathered for coffee and a snack after the worship service ended.

In my childhood memories, few spaces are so full of detail as that church — the potpourri scent of the women’s bathroom, the taste of white bread dipped in grape juice left over from communion, the pew where three generations of the same family sat each Sunday. I also recall the discomforts of church life — feeling bored in bell choir, wondering what to make of the class differences between richer and poorer congregants, learning that a beloved choir member was terminally ill and watching him decline in health each Sunday, hearing my parents talk about the frustrations of church committees.

Maybe this is why religion has always felt so approachable to me. From an early age I was introduced to my religious tradition as a very human affair, resulting from the collective effort of a flawed and eclectic group of people who showed up each week for varying reasons to bring Centenary United Methodist Church to life on the corner of 7th and Eagle Streets. I would go on to engage with religious life in many other settings — at a small Lutheran college in rural Kansas, along the US/Mexico border, in an interfaith community in Hyderabad, India, at Harvard Divinity School, among patients as a hospital chaplain, and now as a parent deciding how to model and encourage an orientation to religious life for my kids.

None of these experiences on their own is particularly unique nor are any of them universal. Indiana is home to more than 9,000 religious congregations representing 27 distinct families of traditions. This is according to Indiana’s Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), one of the foremost religious databases in the world and housed at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University Indianapolis. The ARDA website is a treasure trove of information — profiles on the religious life of every county in the United States, interactive timelines of global religious movements, biographies of religious influencers, and so much more. ARDA’s most recent state report for Indiana identifies 9,029 congregations here, and defines congregations as “parishes, churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, or another site where a religious body has regularly scheduled worship services.”

Of course, counting congregations is just one way to glimpse the immense religious life of our state. But even with that limited lens, there is much to see. Zooming in on any of those congregations will bring into focus a distinct set of people, a building, a surrounding neighborhood, a set of rituals and traditions, the languages spoken there, the texts read there, the music made there, and countless stories of how the people and practices of that congregation have impacted individuals and the larger community over time.

As America approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I am happy to help Indiana Humanities launch Matters of Religion, a multi-year project to explore the role of religion in Hoosiers’ lives, and to engage with how religious liberty — an idea that was central to the founding of America — influences education, democracy, culture, and the breadth of human experience in our religiously vibrant and diverse state. Through a variety of programs, this project will invite Hoosiers to explore why America’s founders valued freedom of conscience, how the meaning of religious liberty is negotiated and experienced by individuals and communities, and how curiosity about the religious lives of others can animate our commitment to freedom and strengthen the civic fabric of our state. (You can read the full press release here).

The project’s name is taken from the Indiana Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which goes out of its way to underscore personal freedom in the realm of “matters of religion” which are described elsewhere in terms of “thought,” “conscience,” “belief,” and “worship.” The title phrase also underscores how the commitment to religious liberty in Indiana is part of a broader American project, as “matters of religion” also appears earlier in such pivotal documents as the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written in 1779 by Thomas Jefferson.

Personally, I like “matters of religion” for another reason. It begs a question that I’m excited to explore through this project, namely: what are we even talking about when we talk about religion and religious liberty, and why does it matter to you, to us, and to our collective life as Hoosiers?

Matters of Religion will kick off this summer with a round of grants to support local programs exploring the role of religion in our state.  You can sign up here to receive our Matters of Religion eNews and be the first to know about grants and other opportunities to follow, including a forthcoming speakers’ bureau, traveling exhibition, public conversations, and more.

We have so much to learn about each other and ourselves. I do hope you’ll join me in shaping this project together. I’m excited to get started.