I am an American religious historian specializing in religion and sports, religion in the American South, and civil religion. Currently, I'm serving as the interim dean of the School of STEAM at Saint Francis University, also holding the position of Professor of Religious Studies.

Teaching at Saint Francis since 2006 has expanded my intellectual horizons, prompting me to explore new disciplinary avenues. One of my proudest achievements is establishing a Minor in Compassionate Care, aimed at future healthcare professionals. Although outside my usual scope, this endeavor has enriched my understanding of healthcare's human aspect, fostering a desire for further exploration in this field.

In my scholarly pursuits, I am fascinated by the unpredictable and creative ways that religious discourses appear in everyday life. My first book Southern Civil Religions: Imagining the Good Society in the Post-Reconstruction Era was an attempt at rethinking how we define and apply the idea of "civil religion." I became frustrated at how an article written by a sociologist in 1967 had come to set the terms for how scholars talk about civil religion. Specifically, I observed a scholarly discussion coming out of this article focused on what does, and does not, qualify as "American civil religion." In contrast, my aim was to to redirect the conversation so that we see civil religion as an analytical tool, one that can be used to mark those places where various people from various times in various places have articulated what they believe American society is and ought to be. 

My book made this point by examining a slice of the American South after Reconstruction, where civil religious discourses took took several forms depending on the speaker, topic, and time. I further clarified my argument in an article that I wrote for the edited volume Civil Religion Today. I can confidently say that this was the first time in my academic career where I completed a piece of writing and felt it fully expressed everything I intended to convey.

My journey into the land of civil religion gave me a basis for thinking about the place of religion in everyday life. A more conventional understanding of religion starts and stops at recognizable places--churches, religious leaders, sacred texts, etc. But my observations of human behavior has shown that the "stuff" of religion resists these tidy boundaries.

Nowhere has this been more evident to me than in the world of sports. Thus, my next book, which I hope will come to print in 2025, is entitled Bodies in Motion: A Religious History of Sports in the United States. Here, I most certainly do not argue that sports represent the "new American religion." Instead, I'm interested in showing how people throughout American history have used sports to decide what is worth cherishing and defending. An article I wrote on Steelers Nation a few years ago gave me a foundation to continue this exploration. 

Indeed, my interest in sports is partially academic and partially personal. I've been a distance runner for my entire adult life, and even though I am officially in my 50s, I still enjoy racing distances from the mile to the marathon. Readers of Bodies in Motion will no doubt detect my interest in this sport. But I also talk quite a bit about boxing, baseball, and a host of other sports that I have no skill or background in.   

For more about me, please check the other pages on this website. Please also feel free to email me with questions, comments, requests, etc.