Professor Jones specializes in New Testament and ancient Christian history. He holds a B.A. in Religious Studies from Yale University, an M.A. in Theology from the University of Oxford, a D.Theol. in New Testament from the University of Goettingen, Germany, and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Vanderbilt University. He joined the faculty in Long Beach in 1988 after having taught in Germany. Dr. Jones's publications include numerous articles, reviews, and translations along with two of his own books: 'Freiheit' in den Briefen des Apostels Paulus, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987, and An Ancient Jewish Christian Source on the History of Christianity, Scholars, 1995. He is currently editing and translating an ancient Christian novel in Syriac (the Pseudo-Clementines) for Brepols Publishers, Belgium. In 1990 and 1998 Dr. Jones was visiting professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Sorbonne) in Paris.

Professor Peter M. Lowentrout was an undergraduate at the University of California, Riverside and received his Ph.D. in Religion/Social Ethics from the University of Southern California. Professor Lowentrout joined the Religious Studies department in 1984; he specializes in Religion and Modern Culture. He has been President of the American Academy of Religion/Western Region and President of the Science Fiction Research Association. He has written numerous articles, including "The Evocation of Good in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings" and "The War of the Wor1ds Panic Revisited: Science Fiction and the Angst of Secularization." He is currently working on a book to be published by the University of California Press titled "The Rags of Lordship: Science Fiction, Fantasy and the Re-enchantment of the World." Prof. Lowentrout is Director of CSULB's University 100 program.

Professor Pandya specializes in women, religion, and globalization. She received her BA from UC Berkeley in Near Eastern Studies/Arabic, and her MA and PhD from UCSB in Religious Studies, with a focus on women and Islam. A Fulbright scholar, she researched Muslim women’s changing religious practices in Bahrain, looking at the impact of education on women’s religious activities, which became the topic of her dissertation. Dr. Pandya worked as a part-time lecturer at CSULB during 2005-2006, and was hired as a full-time assistant professor in 2006. After spending the summer of 2006 in Sana’a, Yemen, she is currently working on a project which examines religious change among educated Yemeni women, and the implications of modernity, globalization, and education on their practices.

Professor Piar obtained his Ph.D. in Religion/Social Ethics from the University of Southern California. He also holds a M.Div. and a Th.M. from Talbot Theological Seminary. He was appointed to the Department of Religious Studies in 1990. Prof. Piar has published a book titled Jesus and Liberation: A Critical Analysis of the Christology of Latin American Liberation Theology (1994). With Jon R. Stone, he has recently edited a primary-source reader, Readings in American Religious Diversity (2007). He has also written several articles on virtue ethics. He specializes in Latin American Religions, Modern Christian Thought, and Religious Ethics.

Professor Hughes has been a member of the Religious Studies faculty since 1990. He has a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Philosophy of Religion/History of Religions from Claremont Graduate School. His areas of specialization include the philosophy of religion, contemporary religious thought, and comparative religious thought. Dr. Hughes also researches contemporary theory in dialogue and pluralism, and the interface between philosophy of religion and recent theology. He published Wilfred Cantwell Smith: A Theology for the World in 1986. He has written many articles including "Wilfred Cantwell Smith and the Perennial Philosophy," "On Naming the Crack in the Wall: The Ethical Mysticism of Dag Hammarskjold," "The Fruit of Mircea Eliade: Bitter or Sweet?" and "A Contemporary Guide to the Literature of Comparative Religion," an extensive bibliographic essay reviewing works appropriate for different levels of reading skills, from high school to graduate level, in the area of world religions.

Professor David Tabb Stewart received his Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley - a degree focusing on Hebrew Bible and Hittitology in their Department of Near Eastern Studies; and the M.A. in Middle East Studies-Hebrew from the University of Utah. His special interests include biblical and ancient Near Eastern religion and law, the literary art of the Hebrew Bible, intertextuality, and ancient notions of disability, alterity, sex and gender. Stewart has taught at Stanford, U.C. Berkeley, U.C. Davis, San Francisco State University, and Southwestern University (the oldest college in Texas) Where he was Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy.

Associate
Professor

 Jon R. Stone (Ph.D., 1990, U.C. Santa Barbara) specializes in Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion, and also teaches courses in American Religious and Social History. He is the author or editor of twelve books, including On the Boundaries of American Evangelicalism (his revised Ph.D. dissertation), The Craft of Religious Studies (1998), Expecting Armageddon (2000), and The Essential Max Müller (2002). His lexicon, Latin for the Illiterati (1996), was named “1997 Outstanding Reference Source” by the American Library Association. With Carlos R. Piar, he has recently edited a primary-source reader, Readings in American Religious Diversity (2007). Currently, he is examining religion as a carrier of ethnic identity among America's ethnic communities. He has previously taught at UC Santa Barbara, UC Berkeley, CSU Bakersfield, and the University of Northern Iowa.