K. Healan Gaston

Lecturer in American Religious History and Ethics

Education

BA, Brown University
PhD, University of California at Berkeley

Profile

K. Healan Gaston (pronounced “He-Lynne”) is Lecturer on American Religious History and Ethics at Harvard Divinity School. Her book Imagining Judeo-Christian America: Religion, Secularism, and the Redefinition of Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2019) offers a comprehensive account of “Judeo-Christian” constructions of American democracy and national identity and the powerful forms of inclusion and exclusion Judeo-Christian discourse authorizes. She is currently at work on two other books: Sanctuary Ethics, which explores the eternal quest for safe haven by elaborating ethical norms drawn from migration and ecology, and Beyond Prophetic Pluralism, which explores the rich relationship between the Christian ethicists and brothers Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr and asks how best to carry forward—while moving beyond—the vision of “prophetic faith” they helped to architect.

Before coming to HDS in 2011, Dr. Gaston taught in Harvard’s Social Studies and Freshman Seminar programs. A specialist on ethics, theology, and the history of religion, she teaches a wide range of courses on how historical perspectives speak to contemporary ethical dilemmas in a world punctuated by religious, social, and political differences. Her areas of specialty and greatest interest include religious diversity/pluralism/interfaith relations, ethno-religious and religio-racial identities, religion and politics/democracy/law, religion and international relations, secularism and secularization, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and religion's place in a global, corporate, and digital age.

Selected publications

Roundtable with Christopher McKnight Nichols, E. Thomas Ewing, Maddalena Marinari, Alan Lessoff, and David Huyssen on “What Came Next: The 1918 Flu Pandemic and Beyond,” Journal of the History of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 21, no. 2 (April 2022)
“The Problem of Religious Authenticity,” American Religion, February 2021, https://www.american-religion.org/inside-out/gaston (“American Religion—Inside Out” roundtable with Jolyon Baraka Thomas, Sandra H. Park, John G. Grisafi, Carleigh Beriont, and Eric M. Stephen)
“The Post-Secular in Post-War American History,” in Herman Paul and Adriaan van Veldhuizen, eds., Post-Everything: An Intellectual History of Post-Concepts (Manchester University Press, 2021)
“Niebuhr’s Background—Family, Church, and Society,” in Robin Lovin and Joshua Mauldin, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr (Oxford University Press, 2021)
“The Judeo-Christian and Abrahamic Traditions in American Public Life,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Religion in America (Oxford University Press, 2018)
“‘A Bad Kind of Magic’: The Niebuhr Brothers on ‘Utilitarian Christianity’ and Democracy’s Defense,” Harvard Theological Review 107, no. 1 (January 2014)
“The Cold War Romance of Religious Authenticity: Will Herberg, William F. Buckley, Jr., and the Rise of the New Right,” Journal of American History 99, no. 4 (March 2013)
“Demarcating Democracy: Liberal Catholics, Protestants, and the Discourse of Secularism,” in Leigh Schmidt and Sally Promey, eds., American Religious Liberalism (Indiana University Press, 2012)