Religious studies, also known as religiology or the study of religion, is the scientific study of religion. There is no consensus on what qualifies as religion and its definition is highly contested. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing empirical, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives.
The Kluge Scholars Council is a body of distinguished scholars, convened by the Librarian of Congress to advise on matters related to scholarship at the Library, with special attention to the John W. Kluge Center and the Kluge Prize. Through discussion and reflection, the Council assists in implementing an American tradition linking the activities of thinkers and doers, those who are engaged in the world of ideas with those engaged in the world of affairs.
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im is a Sudanese-born Islamic scholar who lives in the United States and teaches at Emory University. He is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law, associated professor in the Emory College of Arts and Sciences, and Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion of Emory University.
Emory University School of Law is the law school of Emory University, a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. It was founded in 1916 and was the first law school in Georgia to be granted membership in the American Association of Law Schools.
Michael Jay Broyde is an American legal scholar. He is a professor of law and the academic director of the Law and Religion Program at Emory University. He is also a senior fellow in the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at the university. His primary areas of interest are law and religion, Jewish law and Jewish ethics, and comparative religious law. Broyde has published 200 articles on various aspects of law and religion and Jewish law, and a number of articles in the area of federal courts.
Jane Dammen McAuliffe is an American educator, scholar of Islam and the inaugural director of national and international outreach at the Library of Congress.
Harold Joseph Berman was an American legal scholar who was an expert in comparative, international and Soviet/Russian law as well as legal history, philosophy of law and the intersection of law and religion. He was a law professor at Harvard Law School and Emory University School of Law for more than sixty years, and held the James Barr Ames Professorship of Law at Harvard before he was appointed as the first Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory. He has been described as "one of the great polymaths of American legal education."
Martha Albertson Fineman is an American jurist, legal theorist and political philosopher. She is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law. Fineman was previously the first holder of the Dorothea S. Clarke Professor of Feminist Jurisprudence at Cornell Law School. She held the Maurice T. Moore Professorship at Columbia Law School.
Saïd Amir Arjomand is an Iranian-American scholar and Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University, Long Island, and Director of the Stony Brook Institute for Global Studies. He received his Ph.D. in 1980 from the University of Chicago.
Leonard J. Swidler is Professor of Catholic Thought and Interreligious Dialogue at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he has taught since 1966. He is the co-founder and editor of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies (quarterly). He is also the founder/president of the Dialogue Institute, the senior advisor for iPub Global Connection a book publisher, and the founder and past president of the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (1980–).
John Witte Jr. is a Canadian-American academic. He is a Robert W. Woodruff University Professor and a McDonald Distinguished Professor at Emory University School of Law in Atlanta, Georgia, and is director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion there.
Frank Spruill Alexander is an American legal scholar, serving as the Sam Nunn Professor of Law at the Emory University School of Law. He is also General Counsel for Center for Community Progress.
The Robert W. Woodruff Professorships are endowed professorships at Emory University, named for philanthropist Robert W. Woodruff. The chairs are Emory University's "most distinguished academic appointments [...] reserved for world-class scholars who are not only proven leaders of their own fields of specialty but also ambitious bridge-builders across specialty disciplines." There have been 24 Woodruff Professors appointed since the 1982.
Michael J. Perry is an American legal scholar, specializing in constitutional law, human rights, and law and religion.
Eyal Benvenisti is an attorney and legal academic, and Whewell Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge. He was formerly Anny and Paul Yanowicz Professor of Human Rights at Tel Aviv University's faculty of law. Since 2003 he has been part of the Global Law Faculty at New York University School of Law. He is the founding co-editor of Theoretical Inquiries in Law (1997–2002), where he served as Editor in Chief (2003-2006). He has also served on the editorial boards of the American Journal of International Law, and International Law in Domestic Courts.
M. Cathleen Kaveny is an American legal scholar and theologian. She is the Darald and Juliet Libby Professor of Law and Theology at Boston College. She holds a joint appointment at both the Law School and Department of Theology at Boston College, the first person to hold a faculty appointment in two schools at that university.
Devin J. Stewart is a scholar of Islamic studies and Arabic language and literature. He is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Middle eastern and South Asian studies at Emory University. His research interests include Islamic law, the Qur'an, Islamic schools and branches and varieties of Arabic.
Law and religion is the interdisciplinary study of relationships between law, especially public law, and religion. Over a dozen scholarly organizations and committees focussing on law and religion were in place by 1983, and a scholarly quarterly, the Journal of Law and Religion, was first published that year. The Ecclesiastical Law Journal began publication in 1987. The Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion was founded in 1999. The Oxford Journal of Law and Religion was founded in England in 2012.
Carol Ann Newsom is an American biblical scholar, historian of ancient Judaism, and literary critic. She is the Charles Howard Candler Professor Emerita of Old Testament at the Candler School of Theology and a former senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. She is a leading expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Wisdom literature, and the Book of Daniel.
