Berkley Center

Jerome Copulsky, a Berkley Center research fellow, specializes in modern Western religious thought, political theory, and church/state issues. He co-directed Uncivil Religion: January 6, 2021, a digital resource created through a collaboration of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History and the University of Alabama's Department of Religious Studies. From 2016 to 2017, he was the American Academy of Religion/Luce Fellow and senior advisor at the U.S. Department of State's Office of Religion and Global Affairs. He is the author of American Heretics: Religious Adversaries of Liberal Order (Yale University Press, 2024). His scholarly work has been published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the Journal of Religion, Political Theology, and Perspectives on Political Science, with essays in Political Theology for a Plural Age (2013) and Judaism, Liberalism, and Political Theology (2013). His writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, Christian Science Monitor, Washingtonian, Jerusalem Post, Jewish Review of Books, and Religion Dispatches. Copulsky earned a B.A from Wesleyan University, an M.F.A. from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Brad Onishi researches Christian nationalism and teaches at the University of San Francisco. His book, Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism—And What Comes Next (2023), examines what gave rise to January 6, 2021, and what comes next. He also co-hosts the podcast Straight White American Jesus. 

Yonat Shimron joined Religion News Service in April 2011 and became managing editor in 2013. She was the religion reporter for The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, from 1996 to 2011. During that time she won numerous awards.