Jolyon Baraka Thomas

WITHOUT A PRAYER: RELIGION AND RACE IN NEW YORK CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS. By . New York: New York University Press, 2024. Pp. vii + 241. Paperback, $30.00.

SINCERELY HELD: AMERICAN SECULARISM AND ITS BELIEVERS. By . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022. Pp. [xiii] + 300. Hardcover, $95. Paper, $30. Since the early 2000s, scholars of religion have been developing increasingly sophisticated tools for understanding secularism as a mode of political governance, as a type of public reason, or as an epistemological or affective orientation.

We have the conversation every year. My colleagues and I have pored over PhD applications and have selected our shortlist. We have interviewed a handful of candidates for our tiny number of admission slots, and we have asked these promising junior scholars a series of standardized questions about their research interests. And now we are in a Zoom room quibbling over a student's answer to one of our go-to questions: Why religious studies?