News

A Conversation with Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Alum of the Year 2026

“It’s a big project for us to figure out how to listen to each other, isn’t it?” 

For Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, JD’76, PhD’93, this observation names a central problem at the heart of modern law and public life. Across a career that has moved between legal practice and the academic study of religion, Sullivan has examined how U.S. courts attempt to define and regulate religious life and why those efforts so often falter.

Trained first as a lawyer and later at the Divinity School in the history of religions and theology, Sullivan’s work returns to a persistent question: what happens when institutions built on definition and consistency encounter a domain marked by complexity, diversity, and lived practice?

As the Divinity School’s 2026 Alum of the Year, Sullivan will deliver a keynote address on May 1, entitled "Talking to God: Joan of Arc, Political Theology, and Swift Hall." She recently spoke with Criteria about her intellectual formation, the limits of religious freedom as a legal concept, and what remains at stake in how we talk about religion in the United States today.

To attend Sullivan's May 1 lecture, RSVP here. 

You came to the Divinity School after practicing law. What were you looking for, and what did you find here?

I came to the Divinity School after practicing law in Chicago for about eight years. What I was really looking for was a better way of talking about religion than what I was seeing in the courts. At the time, it was widely agreed that Supreme Court opinions on religion were a mess, with no consistency or logical coherence.

It seemed to me that legal academics didn’t really understand religion, and scholars of religion didn’t really understand law. I wanted to see how people in the academic study of religion approached the subject.

At that time, there was a three-quarter introductory sequence. I studied first with Lawrence Sullivan in the history of religions, then with David Tracy in theology, and in the third quarter, wrote a paper that tried to bring those approaches together.

It was just a revelation to me. I can remember where I was sitting in the lecture hall when I had this very naive thought: what if the justices could understand the richness and complexity of religion the way it’s talked about here?

That question has stayed with me.

Your work often emphasizes the gap between religion as practiced and the way U.S. law seeks to define it. What is the core difficulty there?

Religion as practiced is something the courts just don’t know how to deal with.

It is partly because of a Protestant bias, a tendency to imagine religion as belief-based and internal. But it is also because of the riotous diversity of religious life in the United States. If courts tried to recognize everything that scholars of religion would call religion, is all of that supposed to cancel any kind of legal regulation? No, it can’t work. 

So the problem isn’t just a misunderstanding. It’s structural.

In your work, you’ve argued that religious freedom cannot be fully realized within existing legal frameworks. What do you mean by that?

It is not because I don’t believe in religious freedom. It is that can’t be done in our current legal system.

Modern law understands itself as a kind of universal, transparent language. Everything has to fit into its framework. But religion doesn’t fit neatly into that framework. In the U.S., because of the nonestablishment clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution, we have no common language, authority, or expertise for how religion functions in public policy. 

I think it can be helpful to look at how these things are organized in other countries. For instance, in some countries, there are ministries of religious affairs that can grapple with issues as basic as how to accommodate growing populations of Muslims working in government, which necessitates more halal options in the cafeteria.

What is at stake when legal and lived understandings of religion collide?

We avoid talking about some pretty serious things in this country.

If you look at Supreme Court decisions concerning religion, many of them are about schools, prisons, and healthcare. Those are also areas where the United States has struggled to solve basic social problems.

By arguing about religion in a largely trivial way, we’re not talking about how to achieve free and excellent public education, national health care, or a fair criminal justice system. 

Religion is absolutely essential to human flourishing. But as a community, we need to be able to talk about these things and solve them.

You have worked across both legal scholarship and the academic study of religion. How has moving between those fields shaped your approach?

What I have found is that what I’m doing is kind of translating.

I spend time with legal scholars trying to get them interested in religion and with scholars of religion trying to help them develop a more sophisticated understanding of law.

Because of the strong ideological commitment in the U.S. to the separation of law and religion, it’s a bit of a quixotic project. At this point in my career, I’m less concerned with convincing people. I’m really trying to understand for myself how law and religion are related—historically, culturally, and socially.

The Alum of the Year award recognizes work with impact beyond the academy. How do you think about the broader implications of your work?

I don’t think that people can really evaluate their own effects.

I do think that in many ways the most important work we do as scholars is teaching undergraduates. I’ve been an expert witness in cases, and you don’t have enough time there to really teach people how to think differently. You might have fifteen minutes, maybe an hour. In the classroom, there is ample time to build understanding.

I taught at a large public university, and students were very engaged. I would read evaluations that said things like, “What I learned about Islam growing up was just so wrong.”

That kind of shift matters.

What do you hope students carry forward from your approach to studying religion?

There’s always a law story, and there’s always a religion story, and they’re always connected. 

If you are primarily looking at religion, ask what the law story is. If you’re primarily looking at law, ask what the religion story is. 

Those connections aren’t always obvious. But they’re always there.

Learn more about past Alums of the Year: https://divinity.uchicago.edu/alumofyearlist