On The Issues Episode 71: Melissa J. Wilde

On the Issues with Alon Ben-Meir

Melissa J. Wilde is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her first book, Vatican II, won the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Although most of Wilde’s research has focused on religious change, her most recent research—which she describes as the study of “complex religion”—focuses on what has not changed within American religion, in particular, the enduring ways that it intersects with race, class, and gender today. Her latest book is Birth Control Battles: How Race and Class Divided American Religion. In this episode, we discuss gender inequality and women’s rights in religion, and particularly the issue of birth control and reproductive rights among Christian denominations.