Richard Madsen, China Scholar and Public Sociologist

Richard Madsen, noted sociologist and China scholar, has spent a career examining the role of dialogue and civic involvement in American culture, in Chinese culture, and in the modern world. He has examined the ways religion can contribute to civic culture, and in his own career as a scholar he has given witness to the need to build bridges of understanding between diverse constituencies, including China and the United States. Madsen began his career with Maryknoll in the decade before Vatican II, and though he left Maryknoll, as he himself affirms, he continued to live out the vocation he nurtured there, but in a very different form. His career reflects the possibilities and promises—some yet to be fulfilled—of the Second Vatican Council and its own dialogue with modernity and the global community.