By all measures, our 77th annual meeting in Chicago this year was a great success. Highlights of this year’s meeting included Melissa Wilde’s Presidential Address, “Complex Religion: Interrogating Assumptions of Independence in the Study of Religion,” Mike Hout’s Furfey Lecture “St. Peter’s Leaky Boat: Falling Intergenerational Persistence of U.S.-Born Catholics Since 1972” (In honor of the late Andrew M Greeley), a special Presidential Panel on Religion and Gender, and two ASR/ASA Joint Sessions. The annual meeting also featured a newly initiated Graduate Student Mentoring Lunch, and review panels for each of the two newly released volumes of our Religion and the Social Order book series – Volume 25, Sociologies of Religion: National Traditions, edited by Giuseppe Giordan and Anthony J. Blasi, and Volume 26, Religious and Sexual Nationalisms in Central and Eastern Europe: Gods, Gays and Governments, edited by Srdjan Sremac and R. Ruard Ganzevoort (both Brill, 2015). Further details about these and other aspects of the annual meeting are available on the ASR website at www.sociologyofreligion.com.
The results of ASR’s 2015 election were also announced at this year’s meeting. Every year we elect a President-elect and three Council members from our membership. Michael O. Emerson was elected to the position of President-elect, which means that he will succeed ASR’s current incoming president, Lori Beaman. The three new Council members, who will serve for three year terms, are Mary Ellen Konieczny, Lisa D. Pearce, and Jeremy Uecker. Congratulations to all those elected, and thanks to all of the nominees for their willingness to let their names go forward in the election. Melissa Wilde, our past-president, will be the Chair of the Nominations Committee for our 2016 election.