The Institute for the study of Religion, Economics, and Society (IRES) at Chapman University is pleased to announce their first seminar of the fall semester with speaker Tony Gill, a political scientist from the University of Washington. He will be presenting his paper “Septics, Sewers and Secularization: How Government Regulation Flushes Religiosity Down the Drain” in Wilkinson Hall, Room 116, on Tuesday, September 20 at 5 p.m. 

Anthony Gill (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 1994) is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington, adjunct professor of Sociology at the UW, and a non-resident scholar at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion. He specializes in political economy and religion & politics, with an emphasis on church-state relations, religious liberty and religious economies. He is author ofThe Political Origins of Religious Liberty (Cambridge 2007) and Rendering Unto Caesar: The Catholic Church and the State in Latin America (University of Chicago Press, 1998). Professor Gill has also published numerous journal articles, book chapters and has been a guest host for a local talk radio program.  His latest endeavor is a weekly and free podcast series called Research on Religion that seeks to make social scientific studies of religion more accessible to the public.  Currently, he is studying how governments regulate religious organizations and how this impacts the level of religiosity in society. In addition to studying religion & politics, his interests relate to methodological and analytical issues surrounding comparative political analysis, including research design, rational choice and game theory.  Outside of academia, Prof. Gill is interested in camping, outdoor cooking, martial arts, property rights, the Old West, and hardware stores.  He is intending to write a book about the economics or hardware stores in the near future.

This event is free and open to the public!