Robert Park and Ellsworth Faris as Disciples of Christ: Religion in the Chicago School of Sociology

Abstract In contrast to predominant narratives of the classic “Chicago School,” this paper documents a large number of cross-connections between the University of Chicago Sociology Department and religious educators and reformers throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The paper focuses on previously unrecognized institutions of the Disciples of Christ denomination that brought Robert E. Park, Ellsworth Faris, and their students into contact with religious ministers and missionaries and other religious social reformers, largely outside formal university structures. The paper traces Park’s and Faris’s extensive involvement in these institutions as case studies, in order to contribute to our understanding of the Chicago School’s global ties, to trace forgotten lines of research in the sociology of religion, and to reconsider how historical accounts of the discipline can respond to legacies of secularization and colonization.