Teaching  

I have been teaching full time at Cedar Crest College since 1992.  However, my introduction to the College actually began in 1984 as an adjunct professor.  During this period Religious Studies has been associated with two different majors beginning with Philosophy and Religion.  It is now part of the Social Sciences department and, along with Anthropology, is included with a revised History major.  This new relationship is also consistent with my own research and teaching interests.

I am an Historian of Religion which, as a disciplinary tradition, has grown through the twentieth century through the work of Mircea Eliade and others.  Historians of Religion do not emphasize comparative studies as much as the benefits of studying religious expression in its own, unique cultural context.  Although the name of the discipline suggests the study of the history of each tradition, Historians of Religions are more concerned with the practice of the faith and its inner most experiences of the sacred. This research is often closely allied with Anthropology and frequently shares its methodology and research techniques.

Within the context of Religious Studies I have a number of areas of specialization including the transplantation of mainstream Asian religions to the United States.  My books, Strangers in This Land: Pluralism and the Response to Diversity in the United States (Pilgrim Press, 1988) and East Comes West: Asian Religions and Cultures in North America (Pilgrim Press, 1984) were among the first to examine the transplantation of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam  to the United States following significant changes in U.S. immigration law in 1965.

Strangers in This Land was used by students in the Pluralism Project at Harvard University as they engaged in first hand research in this growing phenomenon.  Their work is regularly reported in the project’s publications including On Common
Ground: World Religions in America (Columbia University Press CD Rom, 1994).  I have participated in the project’s work and have assisted Cedar Crest College in securing a small research grant that has also helped us gain the designation as “Project Affiliate.”

I believe that this work not only has considerable benefit for the study of religious diversity but also for the improvement of the quality of life wherever religious plurality exists.  Ironically, in 1979 my doctoral dissertation focused on a Hindu devotional sect that was relatively unknown in the United States.  Now, a little over twenty years later, the same sect (the Vallabha Sampradya) is constructing a 3.5 million dollar temple outside of Pottsville, less than an hour from the College.