Faculty Spotlight: Christian Smith and the Pizzo Family Scholars pilot program

Christian Smith, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology, is in Rome during the spring 2023 semester serving as the inaugural Pizzo Family Senior Research Fellow, leading  the Rome Research Fellows  pilot program. The new program is hosted by the Rome Global Gateway and Professor Smith is leading a group composed of six undergraduate students and one graduate student working together on a research project that will lead them to the planning, organization, and hosting of a symposium in Rome open to Vatican and Church leaders and academic scholars.

The structure of the program is as follows: each year, one Notre Dame faculty member with a research project of interest to the Catholic Church will be recruited. The faculty selects a small group of students to work together on the project of interest for the full year, spending the fall semester on campus taking a course on the topic and the spring semester in Rome hosted by the Rome Global Gateway.

Smith was the first faculty member to get selected for the program. 

“My research project is focused on trying to better understand why young adults in the U.S. have mostly lost their interest in traditional religion,” explains Smith. 

Smith says: ^“Western culture has undergone huge, deep cultural shifts since the 1990s, due to major technological, economic, political, and other social transformations—including the digital revolution, neoliberal globalization, and the end of the Cold War. The resulting zeitgeist combines the proliferation of “not religious” and “just spiritual” self-identities, especially among younger generations; a growing interest in pagan, paranormal, and esoteric occulture; and the erosion of previously clear boundaries separating secular spheres, like business management and medicine, from interests in “spirituality,” including meditation, mindfulness, prayer, and other tools of self-management and self-transformation. All of this raises fundamental questions about authority, knowledge, trust, selfhood, community, and human personal and social wellbeing that matter greatly for the Christian Church and all traditional faiths.”

“During the summer of 2022, we interviewed about 200 younger adults from all around the U.S. and conducted focus groups in the South Bend area. We have also conducted historical and big data research on how the usage of terminology on the internet, in the news, and book titles have changed over decades, trying to understand the social shift in the crucial years of the 1990s and 2000s,” continues Smith.

The Pizzo Family Scholars Program is a great opportunity for undergraduate students to observe and directly participate in such a research project from the beginning. Most undergraduate students typically engage only the results of other people’s research, whereas this program provides them with the unique opportunity to be part of an ongoing research project, develop research skills, and see how different facets of research are conducted. The experience reaches its peak in the semester Rome and in a conference or symposium. All of this is made possible by support from the Stepan Family, the Pizzo Family, the University of Notre Dame Center for the Study of Religion & Society, the College of Arts and Letters, Notre Dame International, and the Rome Global Gateway.

This year the symposium is titled Has Western Christianity Become Obsolete?: Shifts in Deep Culture and Young Adult Indifference, and will take place at the Rome Global Gateway on April 13 and 14, 2023. The gathering will bring together sociologists who empirically study issues concerning modern Christianity and culture with leaders and thinkers from the Church, to share the research and reflect on ramifications for Christian cultural presence and proclamation. Discussions will focus on learning about different empirical research projects exploring these issues, as well as deliberating about their implications for traditional religious faiths, especially the Christian Church.

This symposium will be modest in size to foster open conversation and so is not open to the public; it thus requires an invitation for participants. People interested in joining  the conversation should contact Christian Smith, at christian.smith@nd.edu, to express their interest.