Pew funds new center

The Pew Charitable Trusts has awarded the University $2.5 million that will go toward the new Center on Religion and Democracy, a non-partisan research center that will explore the relationship between religion and American democratic ideals, institutions and practices. The grant will last nearly four years.

Although democracy has survived for more than 200 years in America, it is faced with many, potentially fragmenting challenges in the 21st century, said James Davison Hunter, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies, who submitted the proposal with Joseph E. Davis, a research assistant professor of sociology.

"What democracy requires, politics alone cannot provide," Hunter said. "Perhaps the central crisis of American democracy is that the moral values and ideals that historically have been the foundation of democratic experience are eroding."

"A center that will explore the relationship between religion and democracy will help us understand the reciprocal roles they play in civil society," said Melvyn P. Leffler, dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. As part of the College, the center will be located initially in Cabell Hall.

Last month U.Va. alumnus Frank Levinson and his wife, Wynnette Levinson, of Palo Alto, Calif., committed $20 million to U.Va., to be split evenly between the new interdisciplinary center and the astronomy department.