The Los Angeles Times interviewed CRCC’s Najuma Smith about her decision to volunteer for Los Angeles Police Department civilian review process. The Times investigation found that some reviewers have been chosen repeatedly …

I regularly meet with a patient who cycles through the hospital often due to chronic illness. Though she faces many challenges in her life, she quickly releases her emotions through crying and …

A philosopher, having made an appointment to dispute with Mulla Nasrudin, dropped by and found him away from home. Infuriated, the philosopher picked up a piece of chalk and wrote “Stupid Oaf” …

How has living in a time of tremendous social change influenced Gen Z’s attitudes towards religion–organized or otherwise? CRCC’s executive director Richard Flory was on KPCC LAist 89.3’s Airtalk with Larry Mantle …

A patient with a permanent visual impairment once asked me, “Why did God give eyes to blind people?” She wondered aloud why God did not, for instance, leave the sockets empty, and …

Since 2021, in response to the emerging needs of AMCLI fellows, the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture (CRCC) has crafted a toolkit focused on deepening our understanding of Islamic modalities …

The following interview guide may be useful to journalists and researchers interested in collecting and telling stories of humanitarianism and/or the role of spirituality in people’s lives and work.  The USC Center …

CRCC’s project on “spiritual exemplars” expands upon a burgeoning field of research on moral exemplars, primarily undertaken in psychology and moral philosophy. Scholars leading this field ask why we should limit our …

Bringing journalists into an academic project breaks some conventional standards of social science research, which typically focuses on controlled samples and standardized research protocols. Doing so allowed us to pull off a …

News coverage of religion can be cynical, focusing on corruption, abuse and the negative elements of religion as a crutch or escape from reality. With this project, CRCC aimed to introduce into …

Around the world, humanitarians care for AIDS orphans, fight oil companies in the arctic, perform surgery in the middle of wars, save migrants from certain death in the desert or the sea, …

As a lawyer and a member of the Baha’i faith, Layli Miller-Muro believes the pursuit of justice is a divine calling. When she was in law school in 1996, Miller-Muro successfully helped …

Pepperdine University Professor and 2023 President of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Thema Bryant spoke about the lingering impact of the pandemic on faith leaders and congregations. This was recorded as part …

Fresno Pacific University, Associate Professor Quentin P. Kinnison, provides insights on what it means to transform pastoral leadership. This was recorded as part of the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture’s …

If CRCC’s annual trends to watch have been growing more ominous in recent years, then 2023 feels like a pivotal year for many of the issues we’ve been tracking:  Like our final …

Peacebuilder Huda Abu Arqoub has a spiritual vision for Israel/Palestine rooted in the past. A truly holy land, she says, is one in which all can live together. When Huda Abu Arqoub …

Even as religious affiliation continues to decline, CRCC’s research on religious creativity and innovation has found groups that are thriving across religious traditions. While not necessarily large (though some are), these groups …

When CRCC’s “Spiritual Exemplars Project” team was invited to present about “resilience,” it was easy to think of many examples within our sample of 100+ spiritually engaged humanitarians who had endured and …

Sister Norma Pimentel is one of the nation’s leading voices calling for new and more just immigration policies. As executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, she …

This article was orginally published by Religion News Service with support of CRCC’s global project on engaged spirituality. MONTCLAIR, New Jersey (RNS) — Nearly two decades ago, at the age of 21, …