Ruth Braunstein

Ruth Braunstein is Director of the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where she is also an SNF Agora Institute Professor of Sociology. She is most recently the author of My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America, winner of the Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book in the Sociology of Culture; and producer and host of the audio documentary When the Wolves Came: Evangelicals Resisting Extremism, which was named among the 20 best podcasts of 2025 by The Atlantic. Her research has been published in top scholarly journals including the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Socio-Economic Review, and Sociology of Religion; and been featured in major media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Time Magazine. She is Past-President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR), and Chair of the Board of Directors of PRRI.