Stephen Prothero

{{short description|American scholar of religion (born 1960)}}

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| name = Stephen Prothero

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| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1960|11|13}}

| birth_place = Cooperstown, New York

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| nationality = American

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| occupation = Religious studies scholar

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| spouse = Meera Subramanian

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• Yale University
• Harvard University

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| thesis_title = Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) and the construction of "Protestant Buddhism"

| thesis_url = https://www.proquest.com/openview/8718c7aee74d4f09797e6fcbecf1c8dd/1

| thesis_year = 1990

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| doctoral_advisor = William R. Hutchison

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| discipline = {{hlist | Comparative religion | U.S. religious history}}

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Stephen Richard Prothero ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|p|r|oʊ|ð|ə|r|oʊ}}; born November 13, 1960) is an American scholar of religion. He is the C. Allyn and Elizabeth V. Russell Professor Emeritus of Religion in America at Boston University{{cite web |url=http://www.bu.edu/religion/faculty/bios/CV/prothero_cv.pdf |title=Archived copy |website=www.bu.edu |access-date=12 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060921010735/http://www.bu.edu/religion/faculty/bios/CV/prothero_cv.pdf |archive-date=21 September 2006 |url-status=dead}} and the author or editor of eleven books on religion in the United States, including the New York Times bestseller Religious Literacy.

He has commented on religion on National Public Radio programs and on television on CNN, NBC, CBS, Fox, PBS, MSNBC, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The Colbert Report.{{cite web|title=The Colbert Report Prothero|url=http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/search?keywords=prothero|publisher=The Colbert Report|access-date=19 April 2015}}{{dead link|date=July 2024|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}} He was the chief editorial consultant for the six-hour WGBH television series God in America{{cite web|title=The Emily Rooney Show|url=http://www.wgbh.org/programs/episode.cfm?featureid=18789|publisher=WGBH|access-date=19 April 2015}} and he served as a consultant on American religious history at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.{{Cite web|url=https://americanhistory.si.edu/events/symposium-religion-early-america|title = Symposium: Religion in Early America|date = 4 February 2015}} A regular contributor to USA Today, he has also written for The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, Salon, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and The Wall Street Journal. His books have been translated into Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Ukrainian.

Prothero has argued for mandatory public-school biblical literacy courses (along the lines of the Bible Literacy Project's The Bible and Its Influence), along with mandatory courses on world religions.Online Video Guide, 20120 He delivered the William Belden Noble Lectures at Harvard University on November 18–20, 2008, on the topic: “The Work of Doing Nothing: Wandering as Practice and Play."{{Cite web|url=https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/11/stephen-r-prothero-to-deliver-noble-lectures/|title = Stephen R. Prothero to deliver Noble Lectures|date = 6 November 2008}} On the matter of his own personal beliefs, Prothero describes himself as "religiously confused".{{cite web|title=After Words with Stephen Prothero|url=http://www.c-span.org/video/?293306-1/words-stephen-prothero|publisher=C-SPAN|access-date=19 April 2015|date=3 May 2010|quote=I think, I am definitely taoist on the weekends. I would say I am religiously confused, and I have friends who want to get me out of being religiously confused. They say you were seeking, you are searching. And I say, I like being religiously confused because as I have said, I think these religions are repositories of great questions and for me what intrigues is the questions and not so much the answers and I love living in the presence of these questions.}}{{cite book|last=Prothero|first=Stephen|title=God is Not One|url=https://archive.org/details/godisnotoneeight0000prot|url-access=registration|year=2010|publisher=HarperOne|location=New York|isbn=978-0-06-157127-5|page=[https://archive.org/details/godisnotoneeight0000prot/page/23 23]}}