Templeton Religion Trust

How can religious leaders and institutions move from crisis responders to long-term development partners?

What if there was more to business than just making money? Grantee Andrew Baughen set out to understand what separates soulful enterprises from soulless ones, and how to build the former. His research centers on a simple but expansive idea: that every business creates value at three levels. What it produces. Who it serves and works alongside. And the wider impact it has on society. "When we see the whole value of business, we don't just generate more, we become more." Learn more about this project: bit.ly/4b0giRi

Grantee Alfonse Borysewicz has spent a lifetime at the intersection of art and faith. His forthcoming book, Painting Prayer: Why Faith Needs Art and Art Needs Faith, he explores the complex relationship between art’s push against boundaries and the church’s respect for the boundedness of faith, tradition, and theology. Learn more and order now: bit.ly/3PiEpVS

Understanding the conditions that sustain moral virtues is key to fostering a cooperative society. That premise sits at the heart of a research project led by grantee Onurcan Yilmaz, set out to answer a deceptively simple question: does religious belief make people more morally consistent? Rather than relying on surveys or hypothetical scenarios, they measured real behavior over a full year, using financial decision-making tasks. Religious believers were not more generous or cooperative overall. But they were notably more consistent across different situations and contexts, applying the same moral principles regardless of who was involved or what the circumstances were. Non-religious individuals were equally prosocial, but their behavior varied more across contexts. Learn more about this project: bit.ly/3T6sjhj

Can a meaningful encounter with art become a significant part of what psychologists term our “narrative identity?” This refers to the autobiographical stories we tell ourselves and others about our lives, experiences, and personal growth over time. Watch the full video: bit.ly/4b5svai

Today's hardest problems don't fit neatly inside any one discipline. Yet academic culture has moved in the opposite direction, toward deeper specialization and narrower silos. The result is a growing gap between the complexity of the challenges we face and the breadth of thinking we bring to them. Grantee Sean Larsen, Editor-in-Chief of Syndicate, is working to close that gap. Syndicate is an online platform that convenes cross-disciplinary conversations among humanities scholars, giving established and emerging thinkers a shared space to wrestle with the ideas that matter most. "Human problems are not divided on disciplinary lines," Larsen says. "Any question worth asking or problem worth engaging is going to have a lot of complexity." Learn more about this project: bit.ly/3QhbOOF

WEBINAR: What does the research actually say about religion and peacebuilding? Register to join "Religions and Peacebuilding: The State of the Data", a webinar presenting the first multidisciplinary systematic review of research on religion and peacebuilding (2001–2025), conducted in collaboration between King's College London and Uppsala University. The webinar is hosted by the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies and the Social Consequences of Religion (SCORE) Religion and Peacebuilding program. Wednesday, 1 April | 3:00–4:30 PM BST | Online Register here: bit.ly/4rnQE0P

It's personal as well as political. Most research on the relationship between science and religion has focused on the United States and the United Kingdom, viewed primarily through a Christian lens. And yet the questions at stake, who belongs in science, how belief shapes policy, how communities respond to crisis, are global. Grantee Fern Elsdon-Baker, professor of Science, Knowledge and Belief in Society at the @unibirmingham, is working to change that. Her project has commissioned more than 80 studies across previously under-researched countries and communities, from South Africa to Brazil to Sri Lanka, to build the first global picture of how people experience the relationship between science and belief. One finding already stands out: 59% of Americans say science and religion conflict. Only 30% say their own beliefs conflict with science. That gap between the public narrative and lived experience is exactly what this research is designed to explore. The implications reach into workplaces, schools, and policy chambers. When religious people feel they don't belong in scientific careers, or when scientists dismiss faith communities, everyone loses. Learn more: bit.ly/3M1Qmxs

What if we welcomed being accountable for the benefit of our relationships, families, and societies? Watch the full video: bit.ly/3SuamJZ

84% of the world's population identifies with a religious group. Yet religion remains one of the most overlooked forces in international development. Grantee Katherine Marshall is working to change that. Her project is building long-term partnerships between development professionals and religious leaders in four countries: Ghana, the Philippines, Senegal, and Sri Lanka. The goal is not to call on religious actors only in a crisis. It is to build the trusted, sustained relationships that make development work more effective, more inclusive, and more lasting. Learn more about this initiative: bit.ly/46rUlei

What if your outlook on the world before a crisis shapes how well you recover from it? A new study from grantee Jer Clifton at the University of Pennsylvania suggests that "primal world beliefs," our deep assumptions about whether the world is fair, improving, or self-healing, may be among the strongest predictors of emotional resilience after trauma and illness. Across two studies involving cancer patients, people living with cystic fibrosis, and students who lived through a campus mass shooting, one pattern emerged: the beliefs people held before adversity struck predicted how much distress they experienced afterward. Three beliefs stood out most: that the world is improvable, fair, and naturally regenerative. Perhaps most striking, these beliefs proved more protective than the broad belief that "the world is good." Resilience, it seems, is not simply about optimism. It is about specific convictions that pathways to recovery exist. Learn more: bit.ly/4bibmKz

People often describe encounters with great art as life-changing, even spiritual. But those experiences have rarely been measured or studied with scientific rigor, until now. Grantee Anjan Chatterjee, a professor of neurology and psychology at the University of @Penn, is using behavioral experiments and brain imaging to study what actually happens when people engage with art. His research explores whether art can genuinely promote understanding and insight, not just pleasure. The findings could reshape how we think about art's role in education, public policy, and human flourishing. Learn more about this project: bit.ly/4auIxbT

Unlike Western philosophies and theologies, which have largely focused on truth, Sufi poetry prioritizes beauty as a transcendental concept. This is where an alignment with aesthetic cognitivism comes into play, claiming that aesthetic engagement advances knowledge and understanding. Sufi poetry is also thought to holistically engage both the body and the intellect. It unites acoustic elements like rhythm and rhyme with imaginative and intellectual features such as metaphor, aporia, and paradox. This synergy between the embodied and the intellectual contributes to what is referred to as the “licit magic” of Sufi poetry. This draws out another contrast with Western intellectual traditions, which tend to be mind- and thought-centric. Learn more: bit.ly/3RD57XL

What role does engaging with fictional characters play in moral reasoning? Watch more: bit.ly/3Xww82A

Does Spiritual Life Reduce Substance Abuse? According to 55 studies, spirituality may mean lower rates of substance use. Read the feature in Psychology Today: bit.ly/40qCz7v Explore the meta-analysis recently published in JAMA Psychiatry: bit.ly/46icXgI

How does religion shape cooperation in our communities and societies? Led by grantee Michael McCullough, this project brings together scholars across the social sciences to study when religion strengthens cooperation and when it contributes to breakdowns. By focusing on real-world behavior, causal evidence, and collaboration across disciplines, this research aims to clarify how religion can help address today’s social challenges and where it may fall short. The goal is practical insight that can inform stronger, more cooperative communities. Learn more: bit.ly/4qcCSNV

Grantee Elaine Howard Ecklund was recently featured on the @Nature Careers Podcast for a conversation on faith in academic life: Can academia handle my religious faith? Listen now: nature.com/articles/d4158…

Driven by a love for the university and its mission to seek truth, The Veritas Forum puts the Christian faith in dialogue with other beliefs and invites participants from all backgrounds to seek truth together.

Grantee Afe Adogame describes grounded theology as “a method for seeking hidden patterns and meanings, a way to unearth stories and enable answers to questions from African realities.” Ultimately, this can lead to important and fundamental theological questions. How does understanding this help us know and practice God’s ways and will? What can it mean for pastors, activists, and believers? How can Christians grow in their faith and knowledge because of these discoveries? “The quality of Christian thinking worldwide depends increasingly on the quality of theologizing coming from Africa,” Adogame emphasizes. “The challenge is that much of the attempts to deal with problems that are uniquely African come from the outside. We want to provide the building blocks for sustainable research and the discovery of profound answers to African problems of African values and spirituality, as well as religious innovation and competition.” Learn more: bit.ly/4g81AKg

What might change if religion became a force for good in solving today’s social problems?