Matthew N. Schmalz

MATHEW N. SCHMALZ {[email protected]} is a grateful husband and father. He is also faculty ombudsperson and associate professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. Mat received his B. A. from Amherst College and his Ph.D. in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago. He has received Century, Watson, Fulbright, and AIIS Fellowships, and resided in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka for a total of four years as a student and researcher. His publications engage global Catholicism (particularly in South Asia), Catholic theology and spirituality, Mormonism, and The Watchtower movement. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Global Catholicism, co-editor of Engaging South Asian Religions: Boundaries, Appropriations, and Resistances (SUNY, 2012, with Peter Gottschalk) and author of Mercy Matters: Opening Yourself to the Life Changing Gift (OSV, 2016). Schmalz has been a panelist for On Faith and the Boston Globe website Crux and also writes for the Huffington Post. He has published opinion pieces in the Washington Post, Fortune, Commonweal Magazine, and The National Catholic Reporter, and has provided expert commentary to USA Today, The New York Times, ABC’s Good Morning America, NPR, CNBC, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and U.S. News & World Report, among others.

Stephen Webb: In Memoriam

Articles/Essays – Volume 49, No. 3

When I heard the news that Stephen Webb had passed away on March 5, 2016, I mourned the loss.

Mormon/Catholic Dialogue: Thinking About Ways Forward

Articles/Essays – Volume 49, No. 1

I would like to begin with an image. There is a tree in the middle of a barren field. A rod of iron extends from it. People jeer from a large building bounded by a river nearby. Those holding on to the rod ignore the jeering from the building and partake of the tree’s sweet fruit, but there are some who heed the jeering and become ashamed even after eating the fruit, and are lost. This image is intimately familiar to so many Latter-day Saints as Lehi’s dream from 1 Nephi 8 in the Book of Mormon. It is, however, a relatively new image for me. I did not grow up with the image.