Jenny Wiley Legath is a scholar of religion, with special interests in the history of American women and Christianity. She is Associate Director of the Center for Culture, Society and Religion at Princeton University and is serving as Acting Director in 2025-2026. She is a Lecturer in the Department of Religion. Legath received her doctorate from Princeton University, her Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, and her bachelor’s degree from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, three sons, and two dogs.
New edited volume published
The Meaning of Weapons (Routledge 2026)
Dr. Legath has a chapter in the newly released volume, The Meaning of Weapons: Material and Discursive Negotiations in Culture and Religion (Routledge 2026). Entitled “White Evangelical Christianity and Concealed Handguns in the U.S.” the chapter examines the intersection of white evangelical Christianity and concealed handgun carry in the United States, arguing that evangelicals construct their religious commitments in such a way as to promote gun carry.
This book studies the role, representation, and materiality of weapons, focusing on what they mean to communities and individuals in various cultural, social, political, and religious settings.
Drawing on a range of case studies from across the globe, the chapters examine (1) how weapons are understood and used in different social, cultural, religious, theological, and ritual contexts; (2) their role within infrastructures of violence, that is, the socio-material, juridical, and spatial arrangements of weapons that enable or constrain violence; (3) processes of human socialization with weapons; (4) the infliction of violence through weapons; and (5) the representation of weapons in popular culture, games, myths, museums, and monuments.
The volume brings together insights from various disciplines including anthropology, religious studies, philosophy, history, and conflict studies. In doing so, it lays the groundwork for highly needed new theoretical and methodological directions to understand the meaning of weapons in our times.
Contact
Jenny Wiley Legath
Associate Director
Center for Culture, Society and Religion
Green Hall, Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
609-258-2281
jlegath AT princeton DOT edu
Events
Between 1880 and 1930, Protestant women in the United States and Canada developed the office of deaconess as a way to weave acts of Christian mercy into a consecrated lifestyle. In so doing, they worked both within and against American culture, especially on issues such as the ongoing constructions of gender and race.
Guest Lecture for Wesleyan HIST289/RELI263: God and Guns: A History of Faith and Firearms in America