Terry Shoemaker is an Americanist scholar focusing on religious change in contemporary life. This includes the ways that religion and religious people adapt, convert, deconvert, reform, and abandon aspects of their religiosity or spirituality. He has published studies regarding religious changes with nationalism, disabilities, popular culture, sports, public life, and deconversion. These interests lead Terry into various classes on Religion in America, Religion and Popular Culture, Religion and the Modern World, and Religion and Sports to name a few. His first edited volume, The Prophetic Dimension of Sport was published in 2018.

Terry currently serves as a board member of the Society for Values in Higher Education (SVHE) and on two American Academy of Religion steering committees. Before joining the SHPRS faculty, he served as Program Coordinator at Western Kentucky University's Institute for Citizenship and Social Responsibility.