DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS

How we got here and what we can do about it

The Maine Council of Churches Hosts
An evening with Pulitzer Prize Finalist Colin Woodard

Monday, September 22, 6:30pm
Followed by refreshments and book signing
First Parish Church, 217 Maine Street, Brunswick

In these difficult and divided times, is it possible to identify a common vision that could hold us together as a nation and help us meet the challenges we face?

Is it possible for Americans to unite around an alternative to the ethno-nationalist agenda currently threatening our democracy?

Join us on September 22 to hear the surprising answer renowned author and historian Colin Woodard has to offer!

He’ll explain what his research reveals about core beliefs most Americans share regarding our national story, identity, and purpose and suggest ways this common ground could be the foundation for our country’s future. And he’ll discuss the role—for good and for ill—that religion has played in contributing to the current crisis and and what role it could play in helping us find our way out.

Proceeds will benefit the work of the Maine Council of Churches which brings a prophetic and progressive voice of faith to the public square, uniting people within, through and beyond the church to build a more just, compassionate, and peaceful world.

ABOUT COLIN WOODARD

A New York Times bestselling historian and Polk Award-winning journalist, Colin Woodard is one of the most respected authorities on North American regionalism, the sociology of United States nationhood, and how our colonial past shapes and explains the present. Compelling, dynamic and thought-provoking, he offers a fascinating look at where America has come from, how we ended up as we are, and how we might shape our future.

Author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (winner of the Maine Literary Award and named 2011 Book of the Year by The New Republic and The Globalist), Woodard has also written:

• The Republic of Pirates — a New York Times bestselling history of Blackbeard’s pirate gang that was made into a primetime NBC series with John Malkovich and Claire Foye
• Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood—winner of the 2021 Christian Science Monitor Book of the Year that tells the harrowing story of the creation of the American myth in the 19th century, a story that reverberates in the news cycle today
• The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier—a cultural and ecological history of Maine’s coast and its people
• American Character: The Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good—a  Chautauqua Prize Finalist and winner of the 2016 Maine Literary Award for Non-Fiction
• Ocean’s End: Travels Through Endangered Seas.

His upcoming book, Nations Apart: How Clashing Regional Cultures Shattered America, (Now available for pre-order, release date November 4, 2025), uses research to present a powerful story that can help Americans rediscover their common identity despite geographic fissures that are being exploited by authoritarians.

He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University, an interdisciplinary research, writing, testing and dissemination project focused on counteracting the authoritarian threat to American democracy and the centrifugal forces threatening the federation’s stability.

While he was the State and National Affairs Writer at the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram he received a 2012 George Polk Award, was named Maine Journalist of the Year in 2014, and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. As a foreign correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, he reported from more than fifty foreign countries and seven continents. His work has appeared in dozens of publications including The Economist, The New York Times, Smithsonian, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Newsweek, and Washington Monthly and has been featured on CNN, the Rachel Maddow Show, Chuck Todd’s The Daily Rundown, The PBS News Hour, and NPR’s Weekend Edition.

Colin has been an expert for numerous television documentaries on Discovery Channel, the History Channel, Netflix, the Smithsonian Channel, and TLC, and has spoken around the world, from the Smithsonian and the Chautauqua Institution to the U.S. Senate, the European Parliament, the German Marshall Fund’s Atlantic Dialogues conference, the Foundation for European Progressive Studies’ annual State of the Unions event, the Milken Institute Global Conference and the Asahi Shimbun’s Asahi World Forum.

A graduate of Tufts University and the University of Chicago, he received the 2004 Jane Bagley Lehman Award for Public Advocacy, a Pew Fellowship in International Journalism at the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Study and was named one of the Best State Capitol Reporters in America by the Washington Post. He lives in Maine.

Special thanks to our host and partners, First Parish Church UCC and Thrivent Financial, for helping to make this event possible.