John Westerdale Bowker is an English Anglican priest and pioneering scholar of religious studies. A former Director of Studies and Dean of Chapel at Corpus Christi and Trinity College, Cambridge he is credited with introducing religious studies as a discipline to Cambridge University. He has been a Professor of religious studies at the universities of Cambridge, Lancaster, Pennsylvania and North Carolina State University. He is an Honorary Canon of Canterbury Cathedral, a consultant for UNESCO, a BBC broadcaster and author and editor of numerous books.
Nova Roma is an international Roman cultural revivalist and reconstructionist organization created in 1998, later incorporated in Maine (USA) as a non-profit organization with an educational and spiritual mission. Nova Roma is dedicated to promote "the restoration of classical Roman religion, culture, and virtues" and "shared Roman ideals".
The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance (OCRT) was a group in Kingston, Ontario that was dedicated to the promotion of religious tolerance through their website, ReligiousTolerance.org from 1995 to 2023.
Nancy Tatom Ammerman is an American professor of sociology of religion at Boston University School of Theology.
Diana L. Eck is a scholar of religious studies who is Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies at Harvard University, as well as a former faculty dean of Lowell House and the Director of The Pluralism Project at Harvard. Among other works, she is the author of Banaras, City of Light, Darshan: Seeing the Divine Image in India, Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras, A New Religious America: How a Christian Country Became the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation, and "India: A Sacred Geography." At Harvard, she is in the Department of South Asian Studies, the Committee on the Study of Religion, and is also a member of the Faculty of Divinity. She has been the chair for the Committee on the Study of Religion. She also served on the Humanities jury for the Infosys Prize in 2019.
Yohanan Friedmann is an Israeli scholar of Islamic studies.
Debra W. Haffner is co-founder and president emerita of the Religious Institute, Inc. A sexologist and ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, she was the endorsed community minister with the Unitarian Church in Westport, Connecticut. Haffner retired from the Religious Institute on April 30, 2016. She has been the settled minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston, Virginia since August 2016.
Linda L. Barnes is an American medical anthropologist, a professor of family medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, and in the Graduate Division of Religious Studies at Boston University. Her research specialties are the social and cultural history of Western responses to Chinese healing traditions, and the interdisciplinary study of cultural, religious, and therapeutic pluralism in the United States. She has been regularly cited as an authority in the use of religiously based therapeutic traditions.
Anne Carolyn Klein is an American Tibetologist who is a professor of Religious Studies at Rice University in Houston, Texas and co-founding director and resident teacher at Dawn Mountain, a Tibetan temple, community center and research institute.
Lee Hyman Rosenthal is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Elaine Howard Ecklund is a published author and professor of sociology at Rice University. She is also the director of the Boniuk Institute for Religious Tolerance at Rice, a Rice Scholar at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, and the president of the Religious Research Association. Her research focuses on institutional change in the areas of religion, immigration, science, medicine, and gender.
Babbie Yvett Robie Wade Mason is an American gospel singer, songwriter, writer, and adjunct professor of songwriting at Point University and Lee University, and also a television talk-show host. Born to Georgie and George W. Wade. Mason's father was a Baptist pastor and she hails from at least five generations of ministers. Mason started playing as church pianist in 1964 and was the choir director for the church her father pastored.
Rice School of Social Sciences is an academic school on the Rice University campus. It serves the largest number of undergraduates, with over a third of Rice undergraduates choosing a major in the social sciences. It is composed of seven departments: anthropology, economics, linguistics, political science, psychology, sociology, and sport management. At the graduate level, five of the seven departments have Ph.D. programs. Each program concentrates on selected areas for education and research. The School of Social Sciences also offers professional master’s programs in Energy Economics, Human Factors & Human Computer Interaction, Global Affairs, Industrial & Organizational Psychology, and Social Policy Evaluation.
The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., more commonly known as the National Baptist Convention, is a Baptist Christian denomination headquartered at the Baptist World Center in Nashville, Tennessee and affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance. It is also the largest predominantly and traditionally African American church in the United States and the second largest Baptist denomination in the world.
David Michael Lindsay is an American sociologist and the president of Taylor University. He was also president of Gordon College, a private, Evangelical Christian liberal arts college on Boston's North Shore from 2011 to 2021. Before arriving at Gordon, Lindsay was on faculty for five years at Rice University and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. He is known as a scholar in the study of leadership, elites, evangelicalism, and higher education.
Monica A. Coleman is a contemporary theologian associated with process theology and womanist theology. She is currently Professor of Africana Studies and the John and Patricia Cochran Scholar for Inclusive Excellence at the University of Delaware, as well as the Faculty Co-Director Emerita for the Center for Process Studies. Her research interests include Whiteheadian metaphysics, constructive theology, philosophical theology, metaphorical theology, black and womanist theologies, African American religions, African traditional religions, theology and sexual and domestic violence, and mental health and theology. Coleman is an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Throughout its history the city of Houston, Texas has been religiously influenced by Protestant Christianity in the Bible Belt. Since the latter half of the 20th century, the Houston area has become home to many different religions in part to its large ethnic diversity, immigration, and refugee resettlement.
As of 2012, the city of Houston has the largest Muslim population in Texas and the largest Muslim population in the Southern United States. That year, Kate Shellnut of the Houston Chronicle wrote that "Some estimate that Muslims make up 1.2 percent of the city's population." As of 2012 the estimated population of Muslims in Houston was around 63,000. As of today, there are over 209 mosques and storefront religious centers, with the largest being the Al-Noor Mosque of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston (ISGH).
Lori Gail Beaman is a Canadian academic. She is a professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies of the University of Ottawa, and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Religious Diversity and Social Change. She has published work on religious diversity, religious freedom, and the intersections of religion and law. She was made a fellow of the Academy of the Arts and Humanities of the Royal Society of Canada in 2015, received an Insight Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in 2017 and received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University in 2018.
Larycia Alaine Hawkins is an American scholar, author, and speaker, who in 2013, became the first female African-American tenured professor at Wheaton College, a Christian Protestant liberal arts college. There she served as an associate professor of political science. She now teaches and researches at the University of Virginia, where she is jointly appointed as assistant professor in the departments of politics and religious studies.
