Paul Marshall Appointed to Serve as Wilson Chair in Religious Freedom at Baylor

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WACO, Texas (Jan. 31, 2017) – Internationally acclaimed scholar Paul Marshall, Ph.D., has joined the faculty of Baylor University as holder of the Jerry and Susie Wilson Chair in Religious Freedom at the Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR). Marshall also will serve as a research professor within Baylor’s department of political science.

Marshall’s appointment was effective Jan. 1, 2017. He succeeds former U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, who served two years as the inaugural Wilson chair.

“I have long admired Baylor’s outstanding faculty and its commitment to be a Christian research university. It is both a privilege and a pleasure to be part of this endeavor,” Marshall said.

Marshall was formerly a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C. He is the author and editor of more than 20 books on religion and politics, particularly religious freedom, including Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians (2013, with Lela Gilbert and Nina Shea), Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide (2011, with Nina Shea), Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion (2009), Religious Freedom in the World (2007), Radical Islam’s Rules: The Worldwide Spread of Extreme Sharia Law (2005), The Rise of Hindu Extremism (2003), Islam at the Crossroads (2002), God and the Constitution (2002), The Talibanization of Nigeria (2002), Massacre at the Millennium (2001), Religious Freedom in the World (2000), Egypt’s Endangered Christians (1999), Just Politics (1998), Heaven Is Not My Home (1998), A Kind of Life Imposed on Man (1996) and the best-selling, award-winning survey of religious persecution worldwide Their Blood Cries Out (1997).

Marshall’s current research is focused primarily on understanding how Muslims and Christians are able to live and work together peacefully in Indonesia – the world’s most populous Muslim country.

“Paul Marshall is a first-rate scholar, and his work is widely read and appreciated by academics as well as religious and political leaders around the world,” said Rodney Stark, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences and co-director of ISR.

Marshall is in frequent demand for lectures and media appearances and has been featured on ABC Nightly News; CNN; PBS; FOX; the British, Australian, Canadian, South African and Japanese Broadcasting Corporations; and Al Jazeera. His work has been published in, or is the subject of, articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Times, The Boston Globe, The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, First Things, New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Reader’s Digest and many other newspapers and magazines.

Marshall also is a Senior Fellow at the Leimena Institute, a Christian public policy think tank in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Syarif Hidayatullah Islamic University (UIN), also in Jakarta

“Paul Marshall has long been recognized as one of the world’s leading social scientists when it comes to religion and politics, and especially the increasingly important topic of religious freedom,” said L. Gregory Jones, Ph.D., executive vice president and provost at Baylor.

“Recruiting Paul Marshall to Baylor University is a real coup,” said Byron R. Johnson, Ph.D., founding director of ISR and Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor. “He’s a prolific scholar whose articles and books provide keen insights into what works and what does not, when it comes to matters related to civil society.”

Marshall is the author of several hundred articles, and his writings have been translated into Albanian, Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Ukrainian. In speeches introducing the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act in the U.S. Senate, Sen. Don Nickles described his work as “powerful and persuasive analysis… which simply cannot be ignored” and Sen. Joe Lieberman described it as “the manifesto of the religious freedom movement.”

ABOUT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY

Baylor University is a private Christian University and a nationally ranked research institution. The University provides a vibrant campus community for more than 16,000 students by blending interdisciplinary research with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas through the efforts of Baptist pioneers, Baylor is the oldest continually operating University in Texas. Located in Waco, Baylor welcomes students from all 50 states and more than 80 countries to study a broad range of degrees among its 12 nationally recognized academic divisions.

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE FOR STUDIES OF RELIGION

Launched in August 2004, the Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR) exists to initiate, support and conduct research on religion, involving scholars and projects spanning the intellectual spectrum: history, psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology, political science, epidemiology, theology and religious studies. The institute’s mandate extends to all religions, everywhere, and throughout history, and embraces the study of religious effects on prosocial behavior, family life, population health, economic development and social conflict.