On Oct. 26, Creighton undergraduate Emily Burke (junior , Sociology, and Justice and Society double major), Sabrina Danielsen, PhD, and Daniel DiLeo, PhD, (all from the Department of Cultural and Social Studies) co-presented original research at the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion Annual Meeting in St. Louis. The co-authored project, “The Duty to Teach: U.S. Bishops, Climate Change, and Catholic Social Teaching,” explores U.S. Catholic bishops’ attention to climate change and other social issues. The project is generously funded by the Louisville Institute, George F. Haddix President’s Faculty Research Fund, and Kripke Center for the Study of Religion and Society.
This interdisciplinary team-focused project brings together a sociologist (Danielsen, Assistant Professor of Sociology), theologian (Dr. DiLeo, Assistant Professor and Director of the Justice and Peace Studies Program), and undergraduate researcher (Emily Burke) to explore the question, “How have U.S. Catholic bishops integrated Laudato Si’ climate change teaching into their teaching ministries relative to other controversial social problems, such as abortion, marriage, and immigration?”
To answer this question, the researchers created a pioneering dataset of more than 10,000 Catholic bishops’ columns from the official publication in each of the 178 U.S. dioceses and archdioceses between June 2014 and June 2019. The team employed quantitative and qualitative content analysis methods and discovered differences between how U.S. Catholic bishops discussed climate change relative to other social issues. At the Annual Meeting, the project received positive feedback from scholars in the sociology of religion and the post-presentation discussion provided the researches with additional insights that will support their pending publication of their findings.
This project expresses the Department of Cultural and Social Studies’ aim to employ social scientific research methods for the common good and the College of Arts and Sciences’ vocation to help create a more just world through interdisciplinary scholarship. The project also expresses the University’s dedication to collaborative undergraduate-faculty research and impactful scholarship informed by Creighton’s Catholic, Jesuit mission.
