Yang Visiting Scholar Gina Zurlo’s Groundbreaking Research on Women in World Christianity

Dr. Gina A. Zurlo’s research focuses on the sociology of religion, women’s studies, and quantifying the demographic makeup of World Christianity. Among her many achievements, Zurlo is the co-director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a visiting research fellow at Boston University’s Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs. In 2019, she was named one of the BBC’s 100 most inspiring and influential women of the year for her work quantifying the religious future.

Below, Zurlo talks about her experience as Yang Visiting Scholar in World Christianity at Harvard Divinity School this 2023-24 academic year, and her research investigating why women outpace men in church participation.

From Music to Graphs

I was a music major during my undergrad, but I have always been interested in religion and global things since I was a kid. When I arrived at grad school, I discovered the work of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, which does quantitative social science work on world religions with an emphasis on Christianity around the globe. There’s just something about graphs and charts that offers a different perspective.

A lot of people just see data and say, “OK, that is what it is.” But I like to ask the deeper questions, “Why is the graph the way it is? Why is the line going this way or that way?” So I think that's what intrigued me. It was not just the data itself, but the questions you have to ask to acquire and learn from that data.

Intrigue in Harvard

I did my PhD at Boston University School of Theology. I've been in the Boston Christian Studies world for a while, and there are many people wondering what Harvard is going to do with World Christianity. When Harvard Divinity School inaugurated the Yang Visiting Scholars in World Christianity program, I was immediately intrigued. I thought to myself: It is fantastic that Harvard is valuing World Christianity and wants to bring in these scholars.

I watched for a couple years, then I eventually said that I needed to get in there. I really wanted to see what it is like to teach World Christianity in the fantastic academic setting of Harvard with its diversity, pluralism, and emphasis on other world religions.

Women in Research

In my work with the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, I have inherited a research tradition that began in 1965. When you look at the history of the research, there has been no gender analysis in it at all since 1965! I wrote a whole dissertation and book (World Christian Encyclopedia, 3^rd edition) about how this research tradition came to be, including why gender was omitted.

I don't think it's just because I'm a woman that I think this is important. This is a basic demographic characteristic of human populations—age, sex, so on and so forth. To miss gender, you're missing a piece of the puzzle.

Still, I think that being a woman does have something to do with it. There aren't a lot of women in quantitative studies generally, especially in the quantitative study of World Christianity. I think my own personal experience in academia coupled with inheriting this research tradition really motivated me to fill that gap.

Women in World Christianity

While men and women are both members of congregations, women are outpacing men by huge rates in terms of participation, beliefs, attitudes, belonging, and so on. Churches would utterly collapse without women. Regardless of whether they're the head pastor, they're running the whole show in many places.

It's still complicated though to say by how much women outnumber men in Christianity globally. This is because the data is just not as strong as I would like them to be. In the first round of my women in World Christianity project, I used government censuses and cross-tabulated it with the gender variable to discern which proportion of Christians in every country in the world—down to the denominational level—are women. And that resulted in world Christianity being 52 percent female.

But if you ask anyone anywhere in the world in their particular church what proportion are women, they'll say 75, 80, 85 percent women. So why this gap? This is what I'm investigating as a Yang Scholar at HDS this year: I’m trying to get more nuanced data to investigate the gap between membership and participation.

Teaching at Harvard

My students are fantastic. They are so engaged! They're asking all the right questions and are 100 percent present. I just love it. They're asking really deep questions right from the jump—questions about colonialism and mission, racism, sexism, and homophobia. 

They're asking the relevant questions that Christians are grappling with around the world today. They're trying to push the boundary of where these conversations are currently in World Christianity studies.

Advice for Future Yang Scholars

My advice is to have a clear plan for what you want to do in a year—and a realistic one. Moreover, what contribution are you going to make to World Christianity? And what specific resources are available at Harvard?

For example, I'm on the email list for every geographic and regional center that exists in this University. Latin American studies, Asian studies, African American studies, European studies—you name it, I'm on their email list to see where my scholarship intersects with the conversations they’re having.

So, if you're interested in being a Yang Scholar here, ask yourself what Harvard offers to support your work, and what do you have to offer to the HDS community?

—Interview conducted and edited by Suan Sonna, HDS news correspondent

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of three interviews with the 2023-24 Yang Visiting Scholars in World Christianity at Harvard Divinity School. Applications for the 2024-25 Yang Visiting Scholars are currently under review. All candidates will be notified by the end of January 2024.