Mark A. Smith

I'm a professor of political science and an adjunct professor of comparative religion and communication at the University of Washington. You can see me pictured at the left with my latest book, Secular Faith: How Culture Has Trumped Religion in American Politics. C-SPAN broadcast a talk I gave on the book, and you can watch it here. The book won the 2015 Morris K. Forkosch Award for Best Book from the Council for Secular Humanism. My next book, which I hope to complete in 2019, seeks to ground morality entirely in secular terms. The book is tentatively titled Right from Wrong: Why Religion Fails and Reason Succeeds.

At the University of Washington, I teach courses on American government, political science as a social science, religion in American politics, research methods, and free will, nature, and nurture.

My previous books include The Right Talk: How Conservatives Transformed the Great Society into the Economic Society and American Business and Political Power: Public Opinion, Elections, and Democracy.