Dr. Chad Seales grew up in the fundamentalist evangelical world in Florida, which served as the birthplace of his interest in studying religion. As a part of his community in Florida, where a significant portion of the population identifies themselves as evangelical, he was formed in a religious culture that bled into many, if not all, aspects of community life. This led to a personal interest in evangelical ethical decision-making and efforts to frame the unique experience of the fundamentalist evangelical worldview. This personal experience of lived religion within evangelical culture would eventually fuel his desire to pursue graduate work in religious studies to explore scholarship related to questions fomented by his own life experiences.
Interestingly, Dr. Seales started his college career as an engineering major but switched to philosophy after realizing his growing interest in philosophy and ethics courses. His pivotal turning point toward religion as a long-term pursuit was in a senior year religion course entitled ‘Religion and Politics in Latin America’. That course changed his academic trajectory because it offered him the opportunity to connect social science intellectuals, such as Weber and Durkheim, with his own growing interest in religious methodology as well as his experiences within American evangelicalism. After taking that course, he decided to pursue graduate school and started a Master of Theological Studies (M.T.S) at Emory University.
While earning his M.T.S degree at Emory University, Dr. Seales began his formal study of religion and honed his theoretical approach to religion. In particular, he was able to take courses in politics, sociology, and anthropology, which helped him to gain an interest in how prominent theory scholars dealt with morality and the creation of religious worlds. He took a particular interest in theorists such as Durkheim, Parsons, Geertz, and Weber as foundational scholars for his own framing of religion in his work. He found Parsons to be a key interlocutor for understanding Geertz and Durkheim. Both scholars, along with Weber, became helpful in how he approached the framing of religion. He still draws from them in his works today as a theoretical foundation and his interest in these scholars has helped him to narrow his methodological interests to social scientific methods in the study of religion.
Throughout his master’s degree, he gained a bourgeoning knowledge of symbolic anthropology and the possibilities for using that theory for unlocking his own research interests. He eventually began to utilize symbolic anthropology for its theoretical and methodological usefulness while receiving his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During that time, he became especially interested in grounded method and extended case study connections to theory. He found that these methods were helpful for linking theory with the methodology he was interested in using to investigate religious phenomena. Throughout his Ph.D., he utilized this theory and methodology to investigate American religious history, with a concentration on American evangelicalism and secularism.
When asked about advice for graduate students, he encouraged current (and future) graduate students to read widely so they can begin to find theories that offer insight into their own research interests. In his words, each student should work to “find a theory that wakes you up.” Employing his own methodology for utilizing theory, Dr. Seales has published two books that are grounded in social scientific theorists, such as Weber and Durkheim. His first work was The Secular Spectacle: Performing Religion in a Southern Town and his second is Religion Around Bono: Evangelical Enchantment and Neoliberal Capitalism. In his current projects, he continues to utilize Weber, Durkheim, and Geertz to provide insight into his work at the intersection of American Christianity and industrial agriculture and foodways.
When asked to recall his best or ‘highlight’ moment of his career as of late, he noted the recent Luce Conference, themed The Social Order of Things: Material Religion in the Americas. The event, he explained, which was hosted by Dr. Seales, was a wonderful moment in his career thus far because of the camaraderie of the participants. He acknowledged the encouraging environment created by the participants and the shared support amongst peers for their current research. The conference offered a unique opportunity to create a small community of scholars who were able to share research outside of written material to gather ideas and engage in helpful discussions.
When asked what advice he would give himself as a graduate student, based on what he knows now from his career in religious studies, he emphasized the importance of focusing on studying what you want to study as a student. He encourages graduate students to go with their instincts and focus on what subject matter they are passionate about: studying what you find interesting and writing what you think about that phenomenon helps keep scholars engaged and writing interesting material.
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Dr. Chad Seales is an Associate Professor in Religious Studies and the Brian F. Bolton Distinguished Professor in Secular Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds degrees from the University of Florida, Candler School of Theology at Emory University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Seales’s research addresses the cultural relationship between religion and secularism in American life, as evident in the social expressions of evangelical Protestants, the moral prescriptions of workplace chaplains and corporate managers, and the salvific promises of neoliberal capitalism. He is the author of Religion Around Bono: Evangelical Enchantment and Neoliberal Capitalism (Penn State University Press, 2019), and The Secular Spectacle: Performing Religion in a Southern Town (Oxford University Press, 2013), and has published articles on industrial religion, corporate chaplaincy, religion and film, and secularism and secularization in the United States.
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Alexandra Nelson-Tomlinson is a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Religious Studies, concentrating on Religion in the Americas. Her research focuses on the relationship between healthism, storytelling, morality, and American Christianity. She also has research interests in narrative medicine, identity formation, fat studies, material culture in religion, and intersectional feminist approaches to the study of religion.
