Ruth Braunstein studies religion, politics, and money, and is a professor at the SNF Agora Institute & the Department of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. She also leads the Meanings of Democracy Lab, which explores the moral and cultural foundations of American democracy.
She’s also the host of When The Wolves Came, a documentary podcast spotlighting evangelical leaders who are resisting political extremism in their church and the country.
Her new book, My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America, delves into how paying taxes became a moral battleground in public life. She is also the author of Prophets and Patriots: Faith in Democracy Across the Political Divide and co-editor of Religion and Progressive Activism: New Stories About Faith and Politics.
Dr. Braunstein’s award-winning research has appeared in top scholarly journals and been featured in major media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Time Magazine. She also writes op-eds for publications including The Guardian, Religion News Service and The Conversation.
Her first book, Prophets and Patriots: Faith in Democracy Across the Political Divide, is a comparative ethnographic study of progressive faith-based community organizing and Tea Party activism, published by the University of California Press. She is also the co-editor of a volume exploring the role of religion in progressive politics, entitled Religion and Progressive Activism: New Stories About Faith and Politics, published by NYU Press.
Ruth’s research, writing and teaching have been recognized by numerous awards and fellowships. She received the inaugural Early Career Award from the American Sociological Association’s Religion Section, and her department’s 2021 Faculty Mentor Award. She is a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University, and has previously been a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Religion; a Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) Public Fellow; a Public Discourse Project Faculty Fellow; and an American Fellow of AAUW. She was also a core faculty member of the UConn Humanities Institute’s Humility and Conviction in Public Life Project.
Ruth is an Associate Editor of Sociology of Religion, and serves on the Editorial Boards of the American Sociological Review, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Sociological Forum, and Qualitative Sociology. She served for several years on the inaugural editorial board of The Immanent Frame, a digital forum on secularism, religion and the public sphere published by the Social Science Research Council.
She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from New York University and a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, where she studied international culture and politics. She is originally from Atlanta, GA.
