Jason A. Springs
Professor of Religion, Ethics, and Peace Studies
Expertise
Religious ethics and moral philosophy; political and social theories, focusing on modern Europe and North America
Biography & Research
Jason A. Springs is professor of religion, ethics and peace studies in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame and a core-affiliated faculty member of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
Springs earned his Ph.D. in religion, ethics and politics from Harvard University’s Committee on the Study of Religion. His research and teaching integrate religious ethics with moral philosophy, political and social theories with specific attention to modern European and North American contexts.
Springs is particularly interested in ethical, philosophical and theological dimensions of restorative justice, attending specifically to its potential to intervene in racialized and class dimensions of the US prison-industrial complex. He works on questions of structural and cultural violence; conceptions of religious toleration and the challenges posed by religious pluralism for transforming conflict; Islamophobia in Europe and North America; democratic theories and practices as frameworks for peacebuilding. These concerns are oriented by his broader research interests in American Pragmatist thought and postliberal theology.
Springs is the author of "Restorative Justice and Lived Religion: Transforming Mass Incarceration in Chicago (New York University Press, 2024) , which frames restorative justice as a form of moral and spiritual practice with the capacity to transform injustice. Springs’ earlier book book, "Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society: From Enemy to Adversary" (Cambridge University Press, 2020), develops conceptions of healthy conflict and strenuous pluralism that are realistic about the challenges and limitations of religious tolerance in a society that is both deeply religiously plural and politically volatile. The book examines seemingly intractable episodes of religious intolerance and moral conflict across contemporary US and European public life—from abortion law battles, religious freedom, to moral and religious defiance of racism and economic marginalization in the Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street movements. It takes up the emergence and persistence of religious intolerance toward Muslims (e.g. Islamophobia) in the US since 9/11 and in France more broadly. The book develops a model of religious interaction that strives to engage the constructive potentialities of conflict.
Springs also is the author of "Toward a Generous Orthodoxy: Prospects for Hans Frei’s Postliberal Theology" (Oxford University Press, 2010), and co-author (with Atalia Omer) of "Religious Nationalism: A Reference Handbook" (ABC-CLIO, 2013). His articles appear in the Journal of Religion, the Journal of Religious Ethics, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Modern Theology, Political Theology, Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and Contemporary Pragmatism.
Recent Work
- "Healthy Conflict in an Era of Intractability" (Journal of Religious Ethics)
Courses
- Structural and Cultural Violence (undergraduate peace studies course)
- Black Lives Matter: Violence vs. Nonviolence (undergraduate peace studies course)
- Social Science University Seminar (undergraduate global affairs course)
- Introduction to Peace Studies (undergraduate peace studies course)
- Love and Violence: Religion, Civil Disobedience and Nonviolent Resistance (undergraduate peace studies course)