McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture

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Dedicated to enabling a deeper understanding of the ways that religion, ethics and culture are interwoven.

The McFarland Center helps foster a vibrant intellectual community at Holy Cross and shares what we learn with scholarly and public audiences worldwide.

Through powerful lectures, thought-provoking discussions, conferences and support for innovative faculty scholarship, the McFarland Center is a place where Catholic and Jesuit perspectives interact with other traditions to create spirited, respectful dialogue.

The McFarland Center’s programs address a wide range of religious and ethical issues while providing thought leadership in two specific areas: global Catholicism and Jewish-Christian understanding.

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Upcoming Campus Lectures & Conferences

Monday, October 6, 2025

4:30 p.m., Rehm Library

Talking about race on university campuses used to be easy. Perhaps too easy. No longer. Today, talk about race is vexed, carrying the double curses of theoretical unsophistication on the one hand and political danger on the other. What if Christian theology—that is, speech about God—can give us a way forward, ways of talking about race that grant us leverage against racism while gathering a politics that centers university life around truth, goodness and beauty?

Jonathan Tran is Professor of Theology at the Divinity School at Duke University. He is the author of Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Mission Statement

The Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture at Holy Cross derives its mission from the College’s conviction, that "the search for meaning and value is at the heart of the intellectual life." The McFarland Center ensures that exploration of the complex interrelationships among religion, ethics and culture plays a vital role in the life of the Holy Cross community. It provides a forum for intellectual exchange and multidisciplinary inquiry that respects people of all faiths, cultures and nationalities while working to enhance awareness of injustice and the conditions that foster human wellbeing.

Global Catholicism

The McFarland Center is among the world’s leading resources for helping students, scholars and the general public understand the diversity and context-specificity of Catholic practice in a Church whose greatest vitality is increasingly found in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Through multimedia web resources, a scholarly journal, lectures, conferences and book projects, the Center promotes scholarship on global Catholicism both on and off campus.

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Catholics and Cultures

Catholics and Cultures provides a first-hand look at contemporary forms of lived Catholicism across the world. This dynamic resource currently features scholarship, images, videos and data from more than 40 countries and regions.
Catholics and Cultures
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.
Journal of Global Catholicism

The JGC is an open-access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal dedicated to fostering the understanding of diverse forms of lived Catholicism with attention to their significance for theoretical approaches within and across multiple academic disciplines. The Journal invites submissions from scholars across the globe.
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Jewish-Christian Understanding

The McFarland Center is committed to interreligious dialogue, with a special emphasis on Jewish-Christian understanding.

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Readings from the Roots

By sponsoring Readings from the Roots, a historically sensitive translation of the Revised Common Lectionary, the McFarland Center helps Christians engage in scripture readings that are true to their original contexts and free of anti-Jewish sentiment.
Readings from the Roots
Kraft-Hiatt Program for Jewish-Christian Understanding

Funded by the College and the Kraft-Hiatt family, the program sponsors opportunities that impact students, faculty and the campus community as a whole. The initiative includes lecture series, conferences, visiting scholars and support for faculty and students to study abroad.
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Study & Research Opportunities

The Kraft-Hiatt Fund has enabled Holy Cross faculty to attend seminars at Yad Vashem, the world's Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, as well as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and has supported students' study abroad at Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
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Rehm Library

The McFarland Center's primary public space is the Rehm Library, an elegant and modern venue for lectures, forums and information sessions with state-of-the-art audio-visual capabilities. Located in Smith Hall, it also provides quiet space for study and reflection, enhanced library resources on religion and spirituality and primary texts on an array of religious traditions.

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Our Staff

Thomas M. Landy

Director of the McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture
Brent Otto, S.J.

Global Catholicism Pre-Doctoral Fellow, McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture

Areas of Expertise Colonial and post-colonial South Asia, Social histories of race and caste difference, Indian Christianity, Missionaries and education
Sarah Potter

Assistant Director for Communications, McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture
Ruby Francis

Program Coordinator, McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture
Fr. Bryan Lobo, S.J.

International Visiting Jesuit Fellow
- Religious Studies Department
Areas of Expertise Theology of religions, Theological aspects of Christian proclamation and mission that consider the unique insights of Christian theology in a religious and culturally pluralistic world