Department of Religion
Chairman, Department of Religion
Director, Graduate Division of Religious and Theological Studies

A historian of American religion, Stephen Prothero specializes in Asian religious traditions in the United States. He teaches courses on American religious history, Buddhism in America, Hinduism in America, Death and Immortality, and Jesus in America. His first book, The White Buddhist: the Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott (1996), was awarded the Best First Book in the History of Religions for 1996 by the American Academy of Religion. He has published articles in Journal of the American Academy of Religion and American Religion and Culture. He is also the co-editor, with Thomas Tweed, of Asian Religions in America: A Documentary History (1998) and the author of Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America (2001). His most recent book is American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon (2003).

For more information see:      http://www.bu.edu/religion/faculty/bios/prothero.html