Wesley J. Wildman

In the School of Theology, Dr. Wildman’s primary research and teaching interests are in philosophical theology, philosophy of religion, philosophical ethics, religious and spiritual leadership, nonprofit entrepreneurship, religion and science, and the scientific study of religion. His PhD is in philosophy of religion and he thinks of his fundamental object of study as complex human systems, including their existential, moral, and spiritual dimensions. In addition to his appointment at the School of Theology, he is Professor of Computing and Data Sciences in Boston University’s Faculty of Computing and Data Sciences where he trains students in computational social science and computational humanities, and teaches AI ethics to undergraduates and masters students.

Dr. Wildman’s scholarly publications cover a wide variety of topics, some theoretical and some practical, and range from multidisciplinary, comparative approaches in philosophy of religion to computational policy analysis trying to make headway on seeming intractable social problems. Dr. Wildman’s publications are listed on his website at WesleyWildman.com, along with descriptions of his books and links to many of his occasional writings. In recent years, he has been writing fiction as well as keeping up the rhythm of non-fiction writings for both academic and popular audiences.

The definitive statement of Dr. Wildman’s philosophical theology is his systematic, six-volume religious philosophy series. This addresses (1) method in philosophy of religion, (2) the relative plausibility of competing ultimacy models, (3) the implications of fundamental physics and biology for philosophical theology (forthcoming), (4) theological anthropology, (5) the philosophical interpretation of religious and spiritual experiences, and (6) the role of religious language in conceiving of and relating to ultimate reality. Wildman is a founding member of the International Society for Science and Religion, and a longtime member of the American Theological Society (serving as its president in 2016-2017), the American Academy of Religion, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Religious Naturalist Association. A festschrift on Wildman’s work was published by SUNY Press in 2022: LeRon Shults and Robert Cummings Neville, eds., Religion in Multidisciplinary Perspective: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Approaches to Wesley J. Wildman. A special journal issue dedicated to his work was published in the American Journal of Philosophy and Theology in 2024. Wildman was invited to deliver an intellectual autobiography at the annual meeting of the Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought in 2021.

Wildman is founding co-editor of the journal Religion, Brain & Behavior, which publishes empirical and theoretical studies of religion employing a host of scientific approaches, from cognitive science to demography and from evolutionary anthropology to archaeology. During its first decade, the journal has played a key role in consolidating and advancing the scientific study of religion, rising to the #2 journal out of almost 600 religious studies journals (according to CiteScore).

Wildman is Executive Director of Just Horizons Alliance (JHA), a nonprofit venture dedicated to fusing knowledge and wisdom for a more just and hopeful future. JHA conducts academic research through the Center for Mind and Culture a non-profit research institute that employs computational models, agent-based simulation, data analytics, and other cutting-edge technologies to help solve pressing practical problems such as human trafficking, social integration of immigrants and refugees, religious radicalization, and rural suicide ($17m in funded research). JHA conducts research on religious and nonreligious worldviews and lifeways through the Institute for the Bio-Cultural Study of Religion. JHA contracts to other researchers and nonprofits to help them with technical tools through nexusSIM. JHA’s DigEthix initiative runs a podcast on the ethics of new and emerging technologies and produces an AI ethics curriculum for university and tech-industry education. JHA publishes books on expansive spirituality for a secular and increasingly post-religious age through Wildhouse Publishing, with fiction, nonfiction, and poetry imprints. JHA also operates Wildheart Evolution, aiming to catalyze conversations among thought leaders about adaptive responses to the unprecedented cultural situation human beings are facing, to amplify wise leaders and empower revolutionary spiritual changemakers, and ultimately to host a convergence of mind and heart around a quest for a human future grounded in wisdom and compassion.

Principal investigator or co-principal investigator on research grants totaling more than US$17 million, he is currently leading projects aimed at understanding how religions change and thereby affect our world, mapping multidisciplinary research fields, analyzing the values operative in the academic study of religion, advancing our understanding of religious and spiritual experiences by building a new state-of-the-art data collection and storage platform, studying rituals employed by nonreligious and unconventionally religious people, and developing new methods for measuring and interpreting spiritual diversity. A more extended list of Dr. Wildman’s research activities is available at the Center’s website.

Dr. Wildman also maintains numerous invaluable resource web sites for the study of philosophy, theology, ethics, religion, religion and science, ecological ethics, and the scientific study of religion, listed at WesleyWildman.com. Those sites feature the incredible work of generations of Boston University graduate students and contain a wealth of information on a wide variety of topics.

Recent and forthcoming nonfiction books

Science and Ultimate Reality, volume 3 in the Religious Philosophy series (in progress)

Modeling Religion: Simulating the Transformation of Worldviews, Lifeways, and Civilization (with F. LeRon Shults; 2024)

Spirit Tech: The Brave New World of Consciousness Hacking and Enlightenment Engineering (with Kate Stockly, 2021)

God Is… Meditations on the Mystery of Life, the Purity of Grace, the Bliss of Surrender, and the God Beyond God(2019)

Effing the Ineffable: Existential Mumblings at the Limits of Language, volume 6 in the Religious Philosophy series (2018)

Recent and forthcoming fiction books

The Axiographer, Volume II: Transformation (in progress)

The Axiographer, Volume I: Emergence (completed)

Brutal Blessing (completed)

The Winding Way Home (2023)