Professional and Biographical Information

    Degrees

Ph.D., Religious Studies and Philosophy, Yale University (2004)
M.A.R., Philosophy of Religion concentration, Yale Divinity School (1997)
B.A., Yale University (1989)

    Teaching Interests

Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Christian thought

Philosophy of religion: Enlightenment, nineteenth-century, and contemporary analytic

The methodology of religious studies, particularly regarding questions of naturalism

Evolutionary psychology and cognitive science of religion 

Selected Publications

Reframing the Masters of Suspicion: Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud.  Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.

Contra Penner, What’s Really Wrong with Functional Explanations”.  Journal of the American Academy of Religion 86 (2018) pp. 665-90.

“Critical Theory, Conspiracy, and ‘Gullible Critique’”.  Forthcoming in a collection of essays edited by M. David Eckel, for the Boston University Institute for Philosophy & Religion, Springer.

“What is ‘Religious Experience’ in Schleiermacher’s Dogmatics, and Why Does It Matter?”  Journal of Analytic Theology 4 (2016) pp. 44-65.

“Is Skeptical Faith Adequate as a Religion?”  Religious Studies 49 (2013) 239-48.

“Religion:  Human Nature and Social Nurture.”  In Interpreting Religion:  The Significance of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Reden über die Religion for Religious Studies and Theology, edited by Dietrich Korsch and Amber L. Griffioen (Tübingen:  Mohr Siebeck, 2011) 125-45.

Schleiermacher on Religion and the Natural Order.  Oxford University Press, 2010.

 “Schleiermacher and Religious Naturalism.”  In Schleiermacher, the Study of Religion, and the Future of Theology:  a Transatlantic Dialogue (De Gruyter, 2010) 15-26.

“Schleiermacher's Theological Anti-Realism.” In  Analytic Theology, edited by Michael Rae and Oliver Crisp (Oxford University Press, 2009), 136-54.

“The Case of the Disappearing Discourse: Schleiermacher's Fourth Speech and the Field of Religious Studies.” Journal of Religion 88:1 (January 2008) 1-28.

Co-edited with Andrew Chignell: God and the Ethics of Belief: New Essays in Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

“Schleiermacher and Otto on Religion.” Religious Studies 40 (2004) 389-413.

“Cognitive Faculties, Cognitive Processes, and the Holy Spirit in Plantinga's Warrant Series”. Faith and Philosophy 19 (2002), pp. 32-46.

Awards and Honors

Trustee Faculty Fellowship, 2007-08 

Yale Prize Teaching Fellowship, May 2004

Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, 2002-03

  

See also: Research Interests