The FSU Department of Religion invites you to attend this public lecture by Dr. Molly Farneth, Professor and Chair of the Religion Department of Haverford College.

“The Politics of Ritual”

Abstract: Molly Farneth, Professor and Chair of the Religion Department at Haverford College, argues that rituals are social practices in which people create, maintain, and transform themselves and their societies. Far from mere scripts or mechanical routines, rituals are dynamic activities bound up in processes of continuity and change. Emphasizing the significance of rituals in democratic engagement, Farneth shows how people adapt their rituals to redraw the boundaries of their communities, reallocate goods and power within them, and cultivate the habits of citizenship. Farneth examines a broad range of rituals enacted to just and democratic ends, including border Eucharists, candlelight vigils, and rituals of mourning, to make a case for an innovative democratic ritual life that can enable people to create and sustain communities that are more just, inclusive, and participatory than those in which they find themselves.

Prof. Farneth's research and teaching focus on modern Western religious thought, with particular attention to social and political ethics. She is interested in the relationship between religious diversity and democracy, and the ways that members of diverse communities confront ethical conflicts and forge solidarity across religious and other differences. Prof. Farneth is the author of Hegel’s Social Ethics: Religion, Conflict, and Rituals of Reconciliation (2017) and The Politics of Rituals (2023).