We live in an era in which public opinion and political positions are sharply divided. This has been exemplified both by the ineffectiveness of Congress in recent years and by the sharpness of the 2016 presidential campaign. One of the most controversial political and moral issues of our time has been whether couples of the same sex should be allowed to get married. In its fundamental sense, that problem was settled by the Supreme Court’s 2015 creation of a constitutional right to such marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges¹, but that hardly has resolved everything. Even if one assumes, as I do, that an overturning of that decision is highly unlikely, it does not settle how individuals and companies must treat married couples of the same gender. Recent proposals for broad exemptions within states have generated intense controversy, and we can expect Congress to face this issue once the new president and members of Congress are in office.

As someone actively pursuing life as a “flexible academic,” I’m excited by the increased attention at AAR to nontraditional research. When I started out as a graduate student in 2008, I was, as far as I knew, the only one pursuing a PhD while actively considering roles outside of academia. I had never heard of anyone leaving academia, except for the occasional person “pursuing a career in politics,” and this was always spoken with a tone of disdain. When I started working full-time in 2012, the choice was purely pragmatic—my funding had run out, but I wanted to finish my degree, so I decided to try balancing my work and my writing rather than taking out loans for what I knew could be an indefinite number of years.

"The more we understand religion and the better able we are as a result to be able to engage religious actors, the more effective our diplomacy will be in advancing the interests and values of our people," said Secretary of State John Kerry to an audience at Rice University's Baker Institue for Public Policy last Tuesday evening, April 26.

In this conversation with Kristian Petersen, Winnifred Fallers Sullivan discusses how the role of chaplains in the United States developed alongside understandings of the First Amendment. Chaplaincy, she argues, provides a legal solution to the fragile problem posed by the free exercise and establishment clauses in the Constitution.

Sullivan is the author of A Ministry of Presence: Chaplaincy, Spiritual Care, and the Law (University of Chicago Press, 2014) which won the American Academy of Religion's Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the analytical-descriptive studies category.