Global Catholicism
The McFarland Center is committed to furthering the study of the diversity and context-specificity of Catholic practice today, in a Church whose greatest vitality is increasingly found in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The Center promotes Global Catholicism scholarship both on campus, through faculty research and events, and in the public eye, through open-access resources like the Journal of Global Catholicism and Catholics and Cultures.
Catholics & Cultures
Catholics & Cultures is a field-leading initiative of the McFarland Center that draws scholarly attention to the ways that ordinary Catholics practice their faith in their everyday lives in a huge array of cultural contexts. The initiative sponsors the Catholics & Cultures website, scholarly conversations, international conferences and an electronic journal, the Journal of Global Catholicism.
The Catholics & Cultures website has published more than 250 articles on 33 countries across five continents. These, plus accompanying demographic data and videos, provide insight into particular cultures and local variations on Catholic practice. The site's articles and videos have been accessed more than 10 million times by users in 206 countries since the site's launch in 2015.
The Catholic World
The Catholic World, an upcoming volume set to be published in the Routledge Worlds Series, aims to be a comprehensive resource for scholars and students who wish to engage with Catholicism not as a monolith, but as an ever-evolving and locally instantiated lived religious tradition. It features writing with perspectives spanning not only North America, but across the globe.
Read the abstract and find the chapter outline for the upcoming volume here.
Journal of Global Catholicism
Since its launch in 2016, the Journal of Global Catholicism, an open-access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal, has emerged as the leading journal in this rapidly emerging field.
In addition to scholarly articles, most JGC issues also include discussions with scholars and other prominent individuals in the field of Global Catholicism. You can view all of the interviews on our YouTube channel.
The Journal's Reach
The Journal is featured in major academic indexes like SCOPUS. Other notable feats as of July 2025 include:
- 75 Published articles
- 180 Countries represented in the Journal's readership
- 62,750 Articles downloaded
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Thomas M. Landy
Director of the McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture -
Mathew Schmalz
ProfessorAreas of Expertise Global Catholicisms, Hinduism, Catholic esotericism, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses, religion and violence, religion and the erotic -
Audrey Seah
Assistant ProfessorAreas of Expertise Liturgical studies, global Catholicism, Deaf and disability theology -
Eduardo Gonzalez
Assistant ProfessorAreas of Expertise global liberation theologies, Catholicisms of the Global South, contemporary systematic theology, decolonial thought -
Brent Otto, S.J.
Global Catholicism Post-Doctoral Fellow, McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and CultureAreas of Expertise Colonial and post-colonial South Asia, Social histories of race and caste difference, Indian Christianity, Missionaries and education
Global Catholicism Grants
In order to continue to enhance the College's strengths in teaching and research on global Catholicism, the McFarland Center offers supplemental research funding in a competitive process open to all faculty at the College.
Grants are awarded in collaboration with the Committee on Faculty Scholarship, which issues calls annually.
Our first round of awards are:
Theologizing the Just Peace Movement: Catholicism, War, and Peacebuilding
Spring and Summer 2025
Grant Recipients: Matthew Eggemeier and Peter Fritz, Religious Studies
This new co-authored book project, provisionally titled Theologizing the Just Peace Movement: Catholicism, War, and Peacebuilding, will offer a Catholic systematic theology of just peace, developed out of Catholic practices of nonviolence and resistance to American militarism abroad and racialized state violence domestically. The "Just Peace" framework we will explore accounts for a variety of social practices geared toward resolving social conflicts without recourse to violence except in extreme cases of last resort. This book will use systematic theology to help understand and practice Just Peace by discovering coherent yet implicit theologies of peace in the work of global Catholic organizations dedicated to fostering justice as a way toward building lasting peace.
Diffused Religiosity among Catholics in the Sinosphere: Investigating Polymer Clay Miniatures of Food in Singapore’s Columbariums
Spring 2026
Grant Recipient: Audrey Seah, Religious Studies
In a Singapore state-run columbarium where people of different religions are put to rest, it is common to find dollhouse-sized polymer clay miniatures of local foods attached to the niche plaque or the base of a columbarium niche of Catholics with Chinese ancestry. Using Chinese ancestral rites as a starting points and drawing upon the concept of diffused religion, this project aims to investigate the prevalence of these polymer clay miniatures and associated spiritualities of death and the afterlife by observing practices at Catholic cemeteries and columbariums over the Lunar New Year season. In line with the goals of the McFarland Center Global Catholicism grant, potential findings may challenge the binary of liturgy and popular religiosity and diffused religion and institutional Catholicism, and facilitate the identification of expressions of indigenized Catholicism in the Sinosphere.