Sociology Prof. Gerardo Martí Wins National Award for Anti-Racist Scholarship

Gerardo Martí, Chair and William R. Kenan, Jr. Endowed Professor of Sociology, has received the 2026 Sandra Barnes Anti-Racist Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association’s Section for the Sociology of Religion.

The award recognizes sociologists whose body of work examines the intersection of religion and race and challenges racist systems and structures. Rather than honoring a single publication, the committee weighs a scholar’s overall recent impact — in peer-reviewed journals and books, but also in reports, podcasts, teaching, institutional service and popular media.

The committee pointed to a string of recent work building on Martí’s earlier books on race, ethnicity and religion, including A Mosaic of Believers, Worship Across the Racial Divide (2004) and Latino Protestants in America (2017), which he co-authored with Mark Mulder of Calvin University and independent scholar Aida Isela Ramos.

Most influential in this year’s decision were two newer books: American Blindspot: Race, Class, Religion and the Trump Presidency (2020), and the forthcoming Aspiring to Antiracism: The Pursuit of Racial Justice in White Progressive Churches, written with Mulder and Kevin Dougherty of Baylor University. The latter draws on years of immersion with the Alliance of Baptists, funded by Lilly Endowment Inc, which has awarded $2 million to Churches that THRIVE for Racial Justice, an initiative Martí also directs with Mulder and Dougherty. 

Martí has also translated his scholarship for practitioners, publishing in Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, Liturgy, Faith & Leadership and The Christian Century, and contributing a foreword to an Orbis Books volume by the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Boswell. Martí also regularly leads workshops, lectures, podcasts and consultations for clergy, lay leaders and educators.

In its citation, the award committee wrote: “This combination of professional and ‘public’ research and publication, aimed at academics and practitioners, with scholarly, critical, and explicitly normative intent, was exactly what the award criteria envisioned.”