Most important throughout my career have been the works of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, my graduate school mentor. His many insights into the study and understanding of religion culminated in his Toward A World Theology, in which he insists that a Christian thinker who works in the context of the history of religion, meaning all religions, is not called on to neglect or forsake the Christian faith. He or she must, however, understand and articulate that faith in the broadest possible context, one that is willing to take into serious account what we are now coming to know about the beliefs of other peoples and other cultures with whom we share this world.

Professor Smith has done extensive work on Muslim communities in America, Christian theology in relation to Islam, historical relations between Christians and Muslims, Islamic conceptions of death and afterlife, and the role and status of women in Islam.

Currently, Dr. Smith is co-editor of The Muslim World, a journal dedicated to the study of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations. She is editor of the Islam section of the new Encyclopedia of Women in World Religions, convener of the North American Regional Research Team for the Pew Program on “Christian Theological Education in Muslim Contexts,” participant in an interfaith study project of the World Council of Church’s Ecumenical Institute, and a member of the Commission on Interfaith Relations of the National Council of Churches. 

She travels frequently to various parts of the Muslim world, and speaks to academic and community groups about recent developments in Islam and its relationship to the West. Having served on the Executive Committee and Globalization Task Force for the Association of Theological Schools, and as the Association’s Vice President, she is now chair of the ATS’s Commission on Accrediting. She participates regularly in local, national and international Christian-Muslim dialogue sessions, and was a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology for 1997-98.

Among Dr. Smith’s recent publications are Islam in America (Columbia Press, 1999); “Islam and Christendom” in The Oxford History of Islam (Oxford University Press, 1999); “Christian Missionary Views of Islam in the 19th-20th Centuries” in Islam and Muslim-Christian Religions, 1998; Muslim Communities in America (State University of New York Press, 1994); Mission to America: Five Islamic Communities in the United States (University Presses of Florida, 1993).

Courses Taught:

• Islam in America and Western Europe   view the Winter/Spring 2007 syllabus
• Major Themes in the Bible and Qur'an   view the Fall 2006 syllabus
• Understanding Islam: Rumor and Reality   view the Summer 2006 syllabus
• Christian-Muslim Relations: The Theological Dimesion    view the Winter/Spring 2006 syllabus
• Introduction to World Religions   view the Fall 2005 syllabus
• The Practice of Christian-Muslim Dialogue in North America  view the Fall 2003 syllabus