Notes on Contributors
Nadeen Mustafa A. Alsulaimi
has a PhD in Religion and Culture from The Catholic University of America, Washington DC, 2018. She is an Associate Professor at King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Some publications: “Abraham Gazed upon the Stars and Said ‘innī saqīm’: The Influence of a ṣaḥīḥ ḥadīth on the Interpretation of Q. 37:88–89, and a Thematic and Structural Reading of Abraham’s Story in the Qurʾān,” Journal of Qurāʾnic Studies JQS, Edinburgh University Press- the Centre for Islamic Studies at SOAS, vol.23, iss.2: (June 2021): pp. 193–228; “Surat Al-Insan Meccan or Madinan: a Thematic and Rhetorical Reading of Surat Al-Insan (Q 76) in Parallel with Surat Al-Qiyamah (Q 75),” JIQSA 5 (2020), pp. 211–238. Her area of interest is Quranic Studies, Thematic Exegesis, and the Quran’s unity and order.
María Enid Barga
currently holds the position of Assistant Professor of Sacred Scripture at the Pontifical College Josephinum where she teaches courses on the Bible and the Qurʾān and suffering in the Bible along with other Scripture courses. Her particular areas of interest lie in the fields of comparative scriptures, biblical studies, qurʾānic studies, cognitive science of religion, and suffering in sacred scriptures. She received her PhD in Biblical Studies from The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
Bede Benjamin Bidlack
is Professor of Theology at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH, USA. He is the author of, among other things, In Good Company: Body and Divinization in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Daoist Xiao Yingsou (Brill 2015) and “Not for Myself Alone: Atonement and Penance After Daoism,” in Atonement and Comparative Theology, edited by Catherine Cornille (Fordham 2021). He teaches and publishes in the areas of creation theology, comparative theology, Daoist studies, and philosophy.
André van der Braak
is currently Professor of Comparative Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Religion and Theology of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. From 2013 to 2018 he led an international research project on Multiple Religious Belonging. He recently published Reimagining Zen in a Secular Age: Charles Taylor and Zen Buddhism in the West (Leiden: Brill 2020).
Francis X. Clooney, SJ
is the Parkman Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School. After earning his doctorate in South Asian languages and civilizations (University of Chicago, 1984), he taught at Boston College for 21 years before coming to Harvard in 2005. From 2010 to 2017, he was the Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard. His primary areas of Indological scholarship are theological commentarial writings in the Sanskrit and Tamil traditions of Hindu India. He is a leading figure in the field of comparative theology, faith seeking understanding through the study of traditions other than one’s own. Recent books include Reading the Hindu and Christian Classics (2019) and Western Jesuit Scholars in India (2020).
Catherine Cornille
is Professor of Comparative Theology at Boston College, where she holds the Newton College Alumnae Chair of Western Culture. She received her PhD from the Catholic University of Leuven. Her areas of research focus on Theology of Religions, Comparative Theology, Interreligious Dialogue, and Religious Hybridity. She is the author of The Im-Possibility of Interreligious Dialogue (2008) and Meaning and Method in Comparative Theology (2020). She is founding editor-in-chief of the book series “Christian Commentaries on non-Christian Sacred Texts.”
Jonathan Edelmann
has a PhD (DPhil) from the Oxford University. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida and an Affiliate of the Center for the Study of Hindu Traditions. His interests are in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and he recently published an article with the Journal of Vaishnava Studies on a late nineteenth century Sanskrit commentary on the text. He is currently working on a book on the formation of devotion (bhakti) as an intellectual category in early Bhāgavata Purāṇa commentaries that will have a comparative Hindu-Christian aspect.
Marianne Farina, CSC
PhD, is a religious sister of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana. She is professor of philosophy and theology at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California. She is a member of the Core Doctoral Faculty at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) and faculty member for the Center for Islamic Studies at the GTU.
James L. Fredericks
PhD, is an Emeritus Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and a priest of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. He was a Fulbright Research Scholar in Kyoto, Japan, and held the Numata Chair in Buddhism and Culture at Ryukoku University in Kyoto. He is the author of Faith Among Faiths: Christian Theology and the Non-Christian Religions (Paulist Press) and Buddhists and Christians: Through Comparative Theology to a New Solidarity (Orbis Books).
Rouyan Gu
received her PhD in Religious Studies from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is currently an assistant professor at Yuelu Academy of Hunan University, China. A scholar of Christian-Buddhist Studies, her recent research focuses on the topics of love, compassion, and Christian-Buddhist interreligious scriptural hermeneutics.
Paul Hedges
PhD, is Associate Professor in the Interreligious Relations in Plural Societies Programme, RSIS, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research areas include interreligious studies, comparative theology, and theory and method in the study of religion. He has published fourteen books and over seventy academic papers. His two latest books are: Understanding Religion: Theories and Methods for Studying Religiously Diverse Societies (California University Press, 2021) and Religious Hatred: Prejudice, Islamophobia, and Antisemitism in Global Context (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).
Holly Hillgardner
is a teacher-scholar trained in constructive theology, with a particular interest in comparative theology. The author of Longing and Letting Go: Hindu and Christian Practices of Passionate Non-Attachment (Oxford University Press, 2016), she teaches a wide variety of religious studies and philosophy classes at Bethany College, including the required course for all students Her research interests include pilgrimage studies, ecology and religion, religion and literature, gender studies, and transformative pedagogies.
Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski
is the Kraft Family Professor and Director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College. His research interests include the history of Jewish-Christian relations, comparative theology, and Anglican history. He is the author of The More Torah, The More Life: A Christian Commentary on Mishnah Avot and Christian Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs.
Louis Komjathy 康思奇
(PhD, Religious Studies, Boston University) is an independent scholar-educator and translator. He researches and has published extensively in Contemplative Studies, Daoist Studies, and Religious Studies, with specific interests in contemplative practice, embodiment, and mystical experience. He also is founding Co-chair of the Daoist Studies Unit (2004–2010) and the Contemplative Studies Unit (2010–2016) in the American Academy of Religion. In addition to over thirty academic articles and book chapters, he has published nine books to date, including the more recent Taming the Wild Horse: An Annotated Translation and Study of the Daoist Horse Taming Pictures (Columbia University Press, 2017) and Introducing Contemplative Studies (Wiley-Blackwell, 2018). His current work explores cross-cultural practices and perennial questions related to contemplative awareness, embodied aliveness, and beyond-states. He lives on the Northshore of Chicago, Illinois.
Christian Krokus
is a professor of theology/religious studies at the University of Scranton, a Catholic and Jesuit university, where his teaching and research focus on Christian-Muslim comparative theology. He is the author of The Theology of Louis Massignon: Islam, Christ, and the Church (CUA, 2017) and is a series co-editor for the Catholic Theology and Islam series at Catholic University of America Press.
Pan-Chiu Lai
(PhD, King’s College London) is currently Professor of Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is interested in modern Christian theology and Buddhist-Christian dialogue. His publications include: Towards a Trinitarian Theology of Religions: A Study of Paul Tillich’s Thought (1994); Mahayana Christian Theology (in Chinese, 2011); and, Divergent Religious Paths to Convergent End? Perspectives of Religious Studies and Sino-Christian Theology (in Chinese, 2020).
Kristin Johnston Largen
is currently president of Wartburg Theological Seminary. She is the editor of Dialog: a Journal of Theology, and co-editor of Buddhist-Christian Studies. Her most recent work is A Christian Exploration of Women’s Bodies and Rebirth in Shin Buddhism (Lexington Books, 2020). Her particular areas of interest are Buddhist-Christian and Hindu-Christian comparative theology and 21st century liberation theologies.
John Makransky
is Associate Professor of Buddhism and Comparative Theology at Boston College, Senior Academic Advisor for Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche’s Centre for Buddhist Studies at Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Nepal, former president of the Society of Buddhist-Christian studies, and a Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute. John’s academic writings focus on connections between devotion, compassion, and wisdom in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, on adapting Buddhist practices to meet contemporary minds, and on theoretical issues in interfaith learning.
Jerry L. Martin
founding chair, Theology Without Walls project, American Academy of Religion; served as chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities and of the Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado at Boulder. Editor, Theology Without Walls: The Transreligious Imperative (Routledge 2019); author, God: An Autobiography, as Told to a Philosopher (Caladium 2016), author, Religion Without Walls: Theological Thinking in a New Axial Age (forthcoming). BA, Political Science, University of California at Riverside; AM, Philosophy and Political Science, University of Chicago; PhD, Philosophy, Northwestern University. Fields: Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind, Theological Scope and Method, Transreligious Theology.
Vahid Mahdavi Mehr
defended his PhD thesis at the University of Paderborn, Germany in 2021. He has studied the Qurʾān, Islamic philosophy, and Imami Jurisprudence. In his dissertation, under the supervision of Klaus von Stosch, he tries to investigate the qur’ānic theological framework in its engagement with rabbinic Judaism.
Lucinda Allen Mosher
(ThD, General Theological Seminary, New York City) is Faculty Associate in Interreligious Studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, USA. She is the editor of the Georgetown Companion to Interreligious Studies (2022) and the Building Bridges Seminar book series presenting Christian and Muslim perspectives on theological themes as a resource for dialogue. She takes particular interest in connecting interreligious concerns, theology, and the arts.
Marianne Moyaert
is Chair of Comparative Theology and Hermeneutics of Interreligious Dialogue at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. For the past few years, her research has focused on the ritual dimension of interreligious encounters and especially the possibilities and limits of (Christian-Jewish) ritual border crossing. She has explored why some practices of inter-rituality are well received while others are perceived as inappropriate and problematic. She is currently working on research on mixed Christian-Jewish and Christian-Muslim couples. She is the author of Fragile Identities: Towards a Theology of Interreligious Hospitality (Brill, 2011) and In Response to the Religious Other: Ricoeur and the Fragility of Interreligious Encounters (Lexington, 2014).
Emmanuel Nathan
is Senior Lecturer in biblical studies and comparative theology at the Australian Catholic University in Sydney. He combines these fields of inquiry through his interest in the encounters between Christianity and Judaism. He is also Director of the ACU Research Centre for Studies of the Second Vatican Council, and in 2020 was named the inaugural Monsignor Professor Denis Edwards Visiting Fellow to the Laudato Si’ Research Institute at Campion Hall, University of Oxford.
Robert Cummings Neville
is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Religion, and Theology, Dean Emeritus of the School of Theology, and Dean Emeritus of Marsh Chapel at Boston University. He belongs to and has held leading roles in the American Academy of Religion, The Metaphysical Society of America, The International Society for Chinese Philosophy, The Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought, The Charles S. Peirce Society, and The Society for Studies of Process Philosophies. He has published over 30 volumes and 300 papers.
Hugh Nicholson
is Professor of Comparative Theology at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of Comparative Theology and the Problem of Religious Rivalry (OUP 2011), and The Spirit of Contradiction in Christianity and Buddhism (OUP 2016), and Buddhism, Cognitive Science and the Doctrine of No-Self (Routledge 2023).
Jerusha Tanner Rhodes
PhD, is a Muslima theologian, scholar, and public educator. She is Associate Professor of Islam and Interreligious Engagement and Director of the Islam, Social Justice and Interreligious Engagement Program (ISJIE) at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. Her work and writing focus on Islamic feminism, interreligious engagement, religious pluralism, and social justice. She is author of Never Wholly Other: A Muslima Theology of Religious Pluralism (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Divine Words, Female Voices: Muslima Explorations in Comparative Feminist Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Devorah Schoenfeld
is Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago. She works on history of Biblical interpretation and comparative theology. Her book Isaac on Jewish and Christian Altars (Fordham, 2014) compares Jewish and Christian commentaries on the near-sacrifice of Isaac. She is currently working on a book about Song of Songs interpretations and religious pluralism.
Klaus von Stosch
is Schlegel-Professor for Systematic Theology at Bonn university and head of the International Center for Comparative Theology and Social Issues. His areas of research include comparative theology, faith and reason, problem of evil, Christian theology responsive to Islam, esp. Christology, theology of the Trinity.
Axel Marc Oaks Takacs
is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Religion at Seton Hall University and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Interreligious Studies. In 2019, he completed his doctorate at Harvard Divinity School with a focus on comparative theology, Islamic Studies, and Catholic Theology. His scholarship attends to poetics, the imagination, and social imaginary as ways to understand Christian incarnational theology and Islamic theology of the imagination. Islamophobia and neocolonial, racial capitalism inform a lot of his research in the field of interreligious theology and studies.
Pim Valkenberg
studied theology and religious studies in the Netherlands. He defended his PhD thesis on Thomas Aquinas and his use of Scripture in 1990 and worked in the fields of theology of religions and interreligious dialogue at the Catholic University of Nijmegen until he moved to the United States to teach Christian – Muslim relations and comparative theology at Loyola University Maryland and the Catholic University of America. Among his publications are World Religions in Dialogue (2013), Renewing Islam By Service (2015), Nostra Aetate (2016) and No Power over God’s Bounty (2021).
Maureen L. Walsh
is associate professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Rockhurst University. She received her doctorate from Georgetown University in addition to earlier degrees from Saint Louis University. She completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, which focused on higher education pedagogy and issues of diversity and inclusion in teaching. Her research interests relate to questions of religious pluralism, Buddhist-Christian comparative theology, lived religion, and women and religion. She is currently working on a book under contract with Rutgers University Press that considers how American Catholicism and Japanese Buddhism respond ritually and discursively to miscarriage, stillbirth, and abortion experiences that are marked by grief for the women involved.
Kijin James Wu
ThD from Boston University, once served as Research Fellow at the Center for Global Christianity and Mission Boston University, MA, USA, is now Associate Professor of Theology and Dean of Chaplains at Chang Jung Christian University, Taiwan. He served as Assistant Professor of Theology at the Methodist Graduate School of Theology, as Committee Member of the World Federation of Chinese Methodist Churches, and as Director of the Theology and Culture Research Center at Chang Jung Christian University. His particular research interests include comparative theology between Christianity and Confucianism, theology and culture, and contextual theology in the social context of Taiwan. His recent publications include “Learning Christian Faith by Singing Together” in 2020 and “Poetry, Music, and Rituality: A Contextual Comparison,” forthcoming.