Contact Eugene Gallagher
Education
B.A., La Salle University; M.A., Ph.D., University of Chicago
"The Congressional hearings on Waco offer us a second chance to begin a more sober and careful conversation about the meaning of 'Waco' and its implications. That conversation must necessarily involve a reaffirmation of our longstanding national commitment to freedom of religion." - Eugene Gallagher
Eugene V. Gallagher
Rosemary Park Professor of Religious Studies
Founding director, 1996, the Mankoff Center for Teaching & Learning
Faculty Fellow, Mankoff Center for Teaching & Learning
On sabbatical academic year 2009-10
Joined Connecticut College: 1978
Specialization:
- History of religion
- New religious movements - Waco
- New Testament and early Christianity
- Western scriptures and traditions
Eugene Gallagher was named the 2004 Connecticut State Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Read the news release.
Professor Gallagher's interests focus on new religious movements with a comparative and historical perspective. His intellectual interests in this area shape how he teaches a series of case studies, including courses on "New Religious Movements," "Cults and Conversion in Modern America" and "Religions of the Caribbean."
His interest in religion as a whole is reflected in courses on "The Study of Religion" and "Theories of Religion." He uses the development of the early Christian movement in the Greco-Roman world as a paradigm of how an initially obscure and suspicious cult movement can enter the social mainstream and achieve a position of power and respectability.
His familiarity with early Christianity decisively shapes his understanding of contemporary new religions, or so-called "cults." In both instances he is particularly interested in forming an understanding of the processes of conversion and dis-affiliation as well as a group's missionary activity and self-defense ("apologetics").
His most recent book is The New Religious Movements Experience in America (Greenwood, 2004). He is the also author of Divine Man or Magician? Celsus and Origen on Jesus and Expectation and Experience: Explaining Religious Conversion. He is the co-author of Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America, described by Kirkus Reviews as "a thoroughly absorbing... analysis of the Branch Davidian movement and critique of America's stance toward 'cults'... the questions raised here deserve to be answered."
Among Gallagher's other publications are the entry on "Magic" in the Encyclopedia of Early Christianity and his entries "Histories of Religions" and "Religions, Comparative Study of" in New Catholic Encyclopedia. He has 29 articles on primitive and classical religions in The Encyclopedia Dictionary of Religions. He has also published over 50 book reviews in journals including "Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn" in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion.
Gallagher has participated in the National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminars titled "Religious Writings and Religious Systems" and "Judaism in Late Antiquity."
He is also the recipient of teaching awards from the Student Government Association and the Sears Roebuck Foundation. In the Fall of 2002, he was given the John S. King Memorial Faculty Teaching Award. It recognizes high standards of teaching excellence and concern for students. As the King recipient, Gallagher delivered they keynote address at the college’s Honors and Awards Ceremony on April 20, 2003, titled “The Best Book About Education Ever Written: The Autobiography of Malcom X.”
Also in the Fall of 2002, Gallagher received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from St. Jean Baptiste de La Salle from which he graduated in 1972. View the news release.
Gallagher was the founding director of the Center for Teaching & Learning at Connecticut College, and is a faculty fellow of the CTL.
Visit the religious
studies department site.