Rachel C. Schneider studies how religion shapes—and is shaped by—public life, with particular attention to its intersections with inequality and movements for social change in the United States and South Africa.

Schneider’s teaching and research interests span religion and the workplace; religion, health, and science; race and religion; religion and politics; and the nonprofit sector. Working at the intersection of the humanities and social sciences, she uses qualitative and interpretive methods that blend empirical research with cultural and historical analysis.

Her scholarship has appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Sociology of Religion, Journal of Religious Ethics, Sociological Inquiry, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, and Journal of Religion in Africa. She is co-editor of Emerging Church, Millennials and Religion, Vol. 2 (Wipf & Stock, 2022) with Terry Shoemaker and Xochitl Alviso.

Her current book project, After Apartheid: Whiteness, Christianity, and the Quest for a New South Africa, is an ethnographic and historical study of how white Christians in South Africa engage with legacies of racism and contemporary racial inequality.

Schneider is currently co-PI with Elaine Howard Ecklund and Kerby Goff (Rice University) of “Revitalizing Interfaith Leadership in Houston and Beyond,” a project funded by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. This project examines the effects of political polarization on interfaith collaboration and how religious leaders collaborate across differences to serve the common good.