Galen Watts

Galen Watts is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo. He is the author of The Spiritual Turn: The Religion of the Heart and the Making of Romantic Liberal Modernity (Oxford University Press 2022), and the editor, with Dick Houtman, of The Shape of Spirituality: The Public Significance of a New Religious Formation (Columbia University Press, 2024).

Essays

Paper collage. A photograph of the Atomium in Brussels, cut into diagonal strips and reassembled over a grid of numbers.

For and against “religious innovation”

Galen Watts | July 2, 2026

Mobilizing social science for the public good.

The Social Science Research Council, an independent, international nonprofit, mobilizes necessary knowledge for the public good by supporting scholars worldwide, generating new research across disciplines, and linking researchers with policymakers and citizens.

Galen Watts

For and against “religious innovation”

Mobilizing social science for the public good.

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