Berkley Center

John L. Allen Jr. is the senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter and the senior Vatican analyst for CNN; in February 2014 he will move to the Boston Globe as associate editor to explore the launch of a free-standing publication on Catholicism. He’s the author of nine best-selling books on the Vatican and Catholic affairs and writes frequently on the Church for major national and international publications. He’s also a popular speaker on Catholic affairs, both in the United States and abroad. Allen’s latest book is The Global War on Christians: Anti-Christian Persecution around the World (2013). He holds a master’s degree in Religious Studies from the University of Kansas.

Zainal Abidin Bagir is the executive director of the Center of Religious and Cross Cultural Studies at Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia. Bagir specializes in philosophy of religion, religion and science, and religion and ecology. He is the author of Science and Religion in the Post-Colonial World: Interfaith Perspectives (2005). Bagir was also a part of the Christianity and Freedom Project headed by the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project. He received a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia; a master’s degree in Islamic Philosophy from the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, Malaysia; and a doctorate in the History and Philosophy of Science from Indiana University. 

Chad Bauman, professor of religion at Butler University, is an expert on religion and society in India. His earliest research focused on the interaction of low-caste Christians and Hindus in colonial Chhattisgarh; his book Christian Identity and Dalit Religion in Hindu India, 1868-1947 (2008) won the prize for best book in Hindu-Christian Studies, 2006-2008, from the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. Bauman has since worked on Indian debates about conversion and Hindu-Christian conflict, authoring Pentecostals, Proselytization, and anti-Christian Violence in India (2015) and Anti-Christian Violence in India (2020). Bauman also writes about Hindu critics of Christianity and western secular modernities, as in “Critiques of Christianity from Savarkar to Malhotra,” forthcoming in The Routledge Handbook of Hindu-Christian Relations, which Bauman edited with Michelle Voss Roberts. Currently, he is beginning research on the experiences and treatment of Hindu minorities in predominantly Christian countries. Bauman was also a part of the Christianity and Freedom Project headed by the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project.

Richard Burgess is a lecturer in Theology at the University of Roehampton in the United Kingdom. Burgess is an expert on global Pentecostalism, with a specialization in the study of Nigerian Pentecostalism, where he taught from 1991 to 2007. A research fellow at the University of Birmingham from 2007 to 2012, he was the principal investigator on "Pentecostal Spirituality, Inter-religious Relations and Civic Engagement: A Comparative Study of Nigeria and Zambia," part of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Initiative, funded by the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture and the John Templeton Foundation. He is the author of Nigeria's Christian Revolution: The Civil War Revival and its Pentecostal Progeny (1967-2006) (2008). Burgess was also a part of the Christianity and Freedom Project headed by the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project. He holds a B.A. from the University of Bristol, M.A. from the London School of Theology, and Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham.

Elizabeth Depalma Digeser is the department chair and professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara and is one of the world’s leading authorities on early Christian thought. Her focus is on the intersection of religion and philosophy with Roman politics and the process of religious conversion in late antiquity. Digeser is the author of The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius and Rome (2000) and A Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists, and the Great Persecution (2012), which explores the interactions of Platonist philosophers and Christian theologians leading up to the Great Persecution of 303-311 CE. Digeser was also a part of the Christianity and Freedom Project headed by the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project.

Thomas F. Farr is president emeritus of the Religious Freedom Institute, an NGO committed to achieving worldwide acceptance of religious liberty. Farr is also a senior fellow at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion. From 2006 to 2018 he was an associate professor of the practice of religion and world affairs at Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and senior fellow at the Berkley Center; during 2017 and 2018 he was director of the Religious Freedom Research Project and from 2011 to 2016 director of the Religious Freedom Project, both at the Berkley Center. After a distinguished career in the U.S. Army and the Foreign Service—which included teaching at West Point and the Air Force Academy, serving as an advisor during U.S.-Soviet arms control talks in Geneva, and leading an interagency task force on verification provisions for the START II Treaty—Farr served as the first director of the U.S. State Department's Office of International Religious Freedom from 1999 to 2003.

Matthew J. Franck is director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute and a visiting lecturer in politics at Princeton University. Professor emeritus of political science at Radford University, where he taught from 1989 to 2010, Franck is an expert on the U.S. constitution and the American founding. Franck's numerous publications include, among others, Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right (2012, as editor), Sober As a Judge: The Supreme Court and Republican Liberty (1999, with Richard G. Stevens), and Against the Imperial Judiciary: The Supreme Court vs. the Sovereignty of the People (1996). Franck was also a part of the Christianity and Freedom Project headed by the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project. Franck earned his B.A. in political science (magna cum laude) from Virginia Wesleyan College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Northern Illinois University

Kyle Harper is senior vice president and provost at the University of Oklahoma. A historian of the classical world, Harper's first book, Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275-425 (2011), was awarded the James Henry Breasted Prize by the American Historical Association and the Outstanding Publication Award from the Classical Association of the Middle West and South. His second book, From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality (2013) received the Award for Excellence in Historical Studies from the American Academy of Religion. Harper’s third book, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire, will appear from Princeton University Press in the fall of 2017. Harper received his B.A. from Oklahoma University in 2001 and his Ph.D. in history from Harvard University in 2007.