CSE Newsletter - A look back at 2025, and what's coming in 2026!

Dear friends of the Center,

As we move into the early weeks of 2026, we wanted to take a moment to pause, look back on the past year, and share a glimpse of what’s ahead for the Center for the Study of Evangelicalism.

Although the Center officially launched in late 2024, 2025 marked our first full year of sustained programming - and it quickly became clear just how much appetite there is for careful, historically grounded, and publicly engaged scholarship on Evangelicalism. Over the course of the year, we were grateful to host a wide range of conversations that reflected both the diversity of the field and the urgency of the questions it raises.

Looking Back: 2025 at the Center

Throughout 2025, the Center hosted 15 public events, welcoming 16 scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals, and drawing thousands of attendees including students, faculty, clergy, and community members. Our events took place on campus at UCCS, in partnership with community venues, and at CU Denver - reflecting our commitment to meeting audiences where they are and fostering conversations that extend beyond the university. Please visit the Center’s YouTube channel for videos of most of the following talks.

Our year began in February with:

• Jimmy’s Faith: Baldwin & Black Religion — An Evening with Christopher W. Hunt
  Dr. Christopher W. Hunt (Colorado College) joined us to discuss James Baldwin, disidentification, and the queer possibilities of Black religion.

• Spiritual Relation & Hallowed Ground — An Evening with Todne Thomas
  Dr. Todne Thomas (Yale University) explored Black evangelical sociality, kinship, and the sacred through ethnographic research.

In March, we turned to the fraught intersection of religion and politics:

• White Christian Nationalism & the Future of U.S. Politics
  A moderated conversation with Dr. Anthea Butler (University of Pennsylvania) and Dr. Randall Balmer (Dartmouth College) helped us to examine race, power, and the political legacies of white evangelicalism.

April brought conversations about division, punishment, and public life:

• Exvangelicalism & Political Division — An Evening with Sarah McCammon
  Sarah McCammon (NPR) reflected on leaving, reforming, and reimagining evangelical spaces in contemporary America.

• Crime, Punishment, & Evangelicalism — An Evening with Aaron Griffith
  Dr. Aaron Griffith (Duke Divinity School) discussed evangelicalism’s shaping role in American criminal justice.

In May, we widened our lens to global and economic systems:

• Religion and Capitalist Humanitarianism — An Evening with Lucia Hulsether
  Dr. Lucia Hulsether (Skidmore College) examined neoliberalism, moral critique, and global humanitarianism.

The start of the fall semester deepened these conversations across culture, history, and theology:

• Evangelical Literature & Culture — An Evening with Karen Swallow Prior

• Confronting the Heresy of Christian Nationalism — An Evening with Shane Claiborne

• Evangelical Empire & the Pacific Rim — An Evening with Helen Jin Kim

October centered questions of gender, authority, and institutional life:

• Between Ordination and Expectation: Women and Evangelical Ministry — An Evening with Beth Allison Barr

And in November, we concluded the year with our Fall Mini-Conference:

• Cultures of Evangelicalism: Past, Present, & Future
  Featuring Matthew Sutton, Karen Johnson, Ansley Quiros, Paul Putz, and Isaac Sharp, this gathering created space for sustained reflection on evangelical history, race, politics, biography, and culture.

Taken together, these events reflect what we hope the Center can offer: a space for rigorous scholarship, careful listening, and conversations that resist simplification and stereotypes while remaining relevant to the community..

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Looking Ahead: 2026 Programming

As we move further into 2026, we’re excited to continue building on this momentum. Upcoming plans include:

• Friday, April 3rd at 6pm (Location TBD): Jesus Springs: Evangelical Capitalism and the Fate of an American City - An Evening with William Schultz (University of Chicago)

• Friday, May 7th at 6pm (ENT Center for the Arts): The Violent Take it by Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening Our Democracy - An Evening with Matthew D. Taylor (Center on Faith + Justice, Georgetown University)

• In September 2026, we plan to host a conference on Evangelicalism and the current American political landscape featuring Mark Labberton (Fuller Seminary) as the keynote.

• In early November 2026, we plan to host another Mini Conference, theme TBD

Additional details, including dates, locations, and registration information, will be shared soon. 

New This Year: Our Podcast

We’re also delighted to announce the launch of the Center for the Study of Evangelicalism Podcast, which extends our mission beyond the lecture hall.

The podcast will feature multiple series designed to bring scholarly conversations into wider public circulation. Our first series, The Postscript, offers reflective conversations with visiting speakers following their campus lectures. The inaugural episode - an interview with Beth Allison Barr - is now live across major podcast platforms and on our YouTube channel.

Why This Work Matters

Studying evangelicalism today requires attention, care, and seriousness. It is a tradition that continues to shape American religious life, political discourse, cultural imagination, and social belonging in complex and sometimes unsettling ways. At a moment when public conversations about religion often become flattened or polarized, the work of the Center is grounded in the conviction that understanding - historical, cultural, and critical - is essential.

We remain committed to fostering scholarship that is rigorous without being insular, critical without being dismissive, and publicly engaged without sacrificing nuance. We’re grateful to all who have joined us in this work so far and look forward to what the coming year will bring.

Stay Connected

All of our public talks are available on our YouTube channel @TheCSE-UCCS.

You can also follow the Center on social media:

• Facebook: The Center for the Study of Evangelicalism

• Instagram: @cse-uccs

• Bluesky: @cse-uccs

• X: @cse_uccs

• LinkedIn: The Center for the Study of Evangelicalism

As we move further into 2026, we’re grateful for the scholars, students, community members, and conversation partners who continue to engage this work with us. The study of evangelicalism remains urgent not because it is static, but because it is continually being reshaped - by law, by culture, by institutions, and by people living its consequences every day. Our hope is that the Center remains a place for careful scholarship, public-facing dialogue, and critical curiosity, and we look forward to what the coming year will bring as we continue asking hard questions together. 

Warmly,
Jeffrey Scholes and Paul Harvey, Co-Directors
Center for the Study of Evangelicalism
University of Colorado Colorado Springs