Kristen Tobey, PhD

Dr. Tobey is a sociologist of religion who researches the dynamics and mechanisms of religious identity, community, and boundaries in the pluralistic context of the contemporary United States.

A sociologist of religion in the United States, she conducts qualitative research into questions of religious identity and community, particularly the mechanisms by which innovative, nonconforming religious identities are constructed, communicated, and perceived.  Her first book, entitled Plowshares: Protest, Performance, and Religious Identity in the Nuclear Age (Penn State University Press, 2016), examined the religious boundary work of a group of radical Catholic anti-nuclear activists, arguing that interlocking performances of socio-moral distinction are essential to the activists’ self-understanding and their conviction that their actions are metaphysically and politically efficacious; and that these performances, meant to distinguish the activists from the sinful world in thrall to “Lord Nuke,” also subtly shape the social world that the Plowshares inhabit with their closest activist kin.  You can read more about this project in an interview with Dr. Tobey on the website Religion Dispatches. 

Dr. Tobey’s current research explores the construction of religious ambivalence within religious communities that typically understand religious identity in binary terms, such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the Church of Scientology.  Read more in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Her research has also been published in The Journal of Religion and Religious Studies Review, among other venues.  She also sits on the editorial board of the journal American Religion.

Dr. Tobey teaches courses on American religious history and culture (such as Religious Enthusiasm in Modern America and Minority Religions in America) and religion and the social sciences (such as Constructing Religious Identity).

Selected Courses

• TRS 2262: Religion, Freedom, and Law
• TRS 3200/5200: Constructing Religious Identity
• TRS 3220: Religious Enthusiasm in Modern America (linked with HS 2140)
• TRS 3227: Minority Religions in the United States
• TRS 5230: The Faithful: Being Catholic in America

Selected Publications

• Plowshares: Protest, Performance, and Religious Identity in the Nuclear Age, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016
• "Mormon-ish: Negotiating Religious Ambivalence Online," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 90:2, 2022
• [coauthored with Brian Collins] “From Middlemarch to The DaVinci Code: Portrayals of Religious Studies in Popular Culture,” Religious Studies Review, 44:2, 2018
• “Beyond Religious Freedom: Religious Activity in the Trials of Plowshares Nuclear Disarmament Activists,” The Journal of Religion, 96:2, 2016