Lowell W. Livezey

        Born on February 15, 1943 in Erie, Pennsylvania, Dr. Livezey directed large studies of urban congregations in Chicago and Boston—the Religion in Urban America Program at the University of Illinois, and the Metropolitan Congregational Studies Project at Harvard Divinity School. The Chicago project (1992-2002) resulted in the book Public Religion and Urban Transformation (New York University Press, 2000), as well as more than 35 scholarly papers and conferences. Lowell W. Livezey studied, taught, and wrote on the agency of religious organizations—especially churches, synagogues, mosques, and other worship centers—in large urban areas. Using ethnographic data assembled in collaboration with colleagues and students in Chicago, Boston, and New York, he argued that the “religion factor” is more salient than often recognized in the economic, demographic, and spatial restructuring of modern industrial cities.

        Dr. Livezey received the B.A. from Swarthmore College and the Master of Theology and Doctor of Ministry degrees from the University of Chicago School of Divinity. He also studied at the
University of Keele in Staffordshire, England. While an undergraduate at Swarthmore, he founded the Chester Home Improvement Project (CHIP) in Chester, PA where his commitment to urban ministry began. After receiving his doctorate, Dr. Livezey spent two decades in the peace movement. His first job was with the World Without War Council, first in Chicago, then as the organization’s National Director in New York. He then went on to serve as Administrative Director, undergraduate program, of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. This work inspired him to conduct a study of how NGO’s conceived of human rights, beginning his second career in studying communities, meanings, culture, and social change. After publishing Nongovernmental Organizations and the Ideas of Human Rights, Dr. Livezey turned his attention to congregations, founding the Religion in Urban America Program. He then taught at Harvard as Luce Lecturer in Urban Ministry at Harvard Divinity School and directed of its Metropolitan Congregational Studies Project. In 2005, Dr. Livezey became Professor of Urban and Religious Studies and Director of the Ecologies of Learning Project (EOL) at New York Theological
Seminary, funded through a major $2 million grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc. of Indianapolis. With EOL, Dr. Livezey considered the entire New York metropolitan area to be his research laboratory.