Ask Bruce Reitman, dean of student affairs at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., about the problems for universities when they are asked to choose between the rights of gays and lesbians and freedom of association for religious groups. The meeting of such divergent opinions is an opportunity for students and faculty to enrich a university […]

Read a Jan. 25, 2005, Christian Science Monitor article, “Campus Christians: Not always at ease,” about Christians feeling as though their faith is mocked in the classroom.

Read a May 12, 2000, Chronicle of Higher Education article describing how nondiscrimination clauses affected a religious group at Tufts University.

Richard R. Gaillardetz is the Joseph Professor of Catholic Systematic Theology at Boston College. He is also the author of By What Authority? A Primer on Scripture, the Magisterium, and the Sense of the Faithful (Liturgical Press, 2003).

Rebecca Sachs Norris, religion professor at Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass., argues that religious states are transmitted and learned through the body, that particular qualities of perception and memory are necessary for this process and that neurobiology and cognitive science provide material to support this claim. Scientific and experiential perspectives, she says, can coexist. […]

Steven Pinker, psychology professor at Harvard University, formerly with the department of brain and cognitive sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the author of How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (Penguin, 2002). He says seeing morality as a product of the brain is less dangerous than the […]

For an overview, read a May 7, 2001, Newsweek story, “Religion and the Brain” by Sharon Begley, posted on the American-Buddha.com website.

Mary Hobgood is an associate professor of religious studies at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass. She wrote the books Catholic Social Teaching and Economic Theory: Paradigms in Conflict (Temple University Press, l991) and Dismantling Privilege: An Ethics of Accountability (Pilgrim Press, 2000).

Bryan Stone serves as associate dean for academic affairs, director of the Center for Practical Theology and a professor of evangelism at Boston University’s School of Theology. He researches congregational development, urban ministry and theology and popular culture.