Honorary Fellows

Paul Knitter is the Emeritus Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, World Religions, and Culture at Union Theological Seminary, New York. He is also Emeritus Professor of Theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He received a Licentiate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome (1966) and a doctorate from the University of Marburg, Germany (1972) Most of his research and publications have dealt with religious pluralism and interreligious dialogue. Since his ground-breaking 1985 book, No Other Name?: A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions, he has been exploring how the religious communities of the world can cooperate in promoting human and ecological well-being. This is the topic of One Earth Many Religions: Multifaith Dialogue and Global Responsibility (1995). In 2002, he published a critical survey of Christian approaches to other religions: Introducing Theologies of Religions (2002). Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian came out in Oct. 2009.

From 1986 to 2004, Professor Knitter was on the Board of Directors for CRISPAZ (Christians for Peace in El Salvador). He is also on the Board of Trustees for the International, Interreligious Peace Council, formed after the 1993 World Parliament of Religions, to promote interreligious peace-making projects.

Ron Numbers, Hilldale Professor of the History of Science and Medicine, recently completed his thirty-eighth year in the department and anticipates retiring at the end of the calendar year. He continues to edit, with David Lindberg, the eight-volume Cambridge History of Science(2003- .), five volumes of which have appeared and a sixth is in press. His Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (Harvard University Press, 2009), has already been translated into Korean, Polish, Spanish, and Portuguese, and is forthcoming in Chinese and Greek. He has recently finished co-editing Gods in America: Religious Pluralism in the United States (Oxford University Press, in press), with Charles Cohen; and Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet (under review at Oxford University Press), edited with Terrie Aamodt and Gary Land. In retirement he plans to complete Science and the Americans: A History (for Basic Books), a biography of John Harvey Kellogg (for Harvard University Press), and three other unfinished books. During the 2012-13 academic year he will be traveling to Brazil, Greece, and Abu Dahbi, while continuing to serve as past president on the executive committee of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science/Division of History of Science and Technology.