University of Pennsylvania’s Anthea Butler Is Honored by the American Academy of Religion

Anthea Butler, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania, has received the 2022 Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion from the American Academy of Religion. The Marty Award is given annually to an individual whose work helps advance the public understanding of religion.

The award committee praised Professor Butler for her “distinguished record of scholarship on race, gender, and religion in American religious history as well as her innovative and multidimensional efforts to engage diverse publics and the media.”

Dr. Butler joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in 2009 and currently serves as chair of the department of religious studies. She is president of the American Society for Church History. Professor Butler is also a member of the American Academy of Religion, the American Historical Association, and the International Communications Association.

A historian of African American and American religion, Professor Butler’s research and writing span African American religion and history, race, politics, Evangelicalism, gender and sexuality, media, and popular culture. Her most recent book is White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America  (University of North Carolina Press, 2021).

Dr. Butler is a graduate of the University of Houston Clear Lake. She holds a master’s degree from the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, and a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in religion from Vanderbilt University in Nashville.