Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life

Learn more about the center, its namesake and history, and the leadership behind it.

Check out our upcoming events for the Fall 2024 semester.

Monthly lunch discussions at McCook 201 at which a group of faculty and students meet for a discussion and feedback of an upcoming scholarly article or chapter presented by the author.

Each year an accomplished scholar, religious leader or public figures is honored as Distinguished Visiting Fellow. Fellows visit campus for about one week to speak, interact with students and faculty and participate in the life of the Greenberg Center. The 2025 Distinguished Fellow was Terrence Johnson from the Harvard University, a leading scholar on religion and race.

The prize honors a journalist whose work demonstrates the qualities of integrity, insight, journalistic excellence, and serious moral purpose that were the hallmarks of Moses Berkman’s journalism. The prize was established by a gift from the estate of his wife Florence Berkman, also a longtime journalist at the Hartford Times and Hartford Courant. The 2022 Award winner was Thomas Edsall, veteran investigative journalist and columnist for the New York Times.

Many of the challenges of society today involve the interaction of religious and secular values. Through its Program on Public Values, the Greenberg Center explores the values that inform public debate on critical issues of our time. In recent years the Program has engaged in a range of activities related to climate change.

The Program on Public Values sponsors Trinity’s Moses Berkman Memorial Journalism Award, given biennially to a distinguished American journalist for lifetime achievement. The 2022 Moses Berkman Memorial Award recipient was Thomas Edsall, columnist for the New York Times.

Former director Mark Silk’s Religion News Service column on religion and politics.

Books and articles by our faculty and fellows.

Published by the Greenberg Center from 1997 to 2016, Religion in the News, a review of journalism, examined how journalists covered religious dimensions of the news. The Religion in the News archive is a valuable resource.

Check here for the Greenberg Center’s archive of Annual reports with descriptions of the academic year’s events covering the last five years.