Terry Shoemaker

Terry "Shoemaker" is a qualitative research scholar attentive to religion trends in contemporary life in the United States. This includes the ways that religion and religious people sociologically adapt, convert, deconvert, reform, and abandon aspects of their religiosity or spirituality. Specifically, he theorizes how people conceptualize the sacred elements of human experience. Because of this, he is interested in studying sports in the United States through the lens of religious studies theories and methods. His work is featured at numerous sites like The Conversation, Zócalo Public Square, and Religion Dispatches. He regularly consults on podcasts, news articles, and with local organizations.

His forthcoming book (August 2026), Spiritual Resurgence: Cultural Transformations and the Spiritual but Not Religious, examines the social conditions compelling some people to reject religion and religious institutions and explore spirituality. Much of this, according to his research, hinges on the cultural disruptions brought about with digital technology. Defining "spirituality" as a type of position, posture, and set of practices competing with religion in contemporary American society, Shoemaker analyzes how information overload, ideological polarization, and the co-optation of established religion by politics and capitalism increasingly prompts individuals to seek out the spiritual.

Shoemaker's previous  book Religions and Sports: The Basics provides an introductory text for how to understand the many relationships between religion and sports, and how to study the two phenomena. Religions and Sports follows previously published work like The Prophetic Dimension of Sport (2018) and a second edited volume regarding the future of progressive Christianity and the Millennial generation with Wifp & Stock Publishers. Shoemaker currently serves as the president-elect of the Society for the Future of Higher Education (SFHE), as the co-editor of the academic journal the International Journal of Sport and Religion, and on the Religion, Sport, and Play American Academy of Religion steering committee.

Shoemaker co-directs Sports at Humanities Institute and teaches a upper-level undergraduate Religion and Sports course, which forms part of an interdisciplinary, liberal arts undergraduate certificate in “Sports, Cultures, and Ethics." He is  a faculty affiliate at the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict.