Bio
Christopher W. Chase currently serves as Senior Lecturer of Religious Studies. He previously taught at Grandview University, Michigan State University and Albion College. An interdisciplinary scholar by training, he has published in the study of religion, ethnicity and music, as well as emergent theologies. Chase’s current projects focus on the roles of religious musics in the lives of American Hindus, African-American Adventists, countercultural Pagans and Mormon Amerindians. In addition, he serves as Review Editor for Pomegranate: The International Journal for Pagan Studies.
Research areas
American Religious History and Culture; Africana Religious Traditions; Religion and Music; Emergent Religion
Courses taught
At ISU
Religion in America
Introducing World Religions
African-American Religious Experience
Independent Studies (Religion, Music and Health, Transnational Jainism, Scientology)
At previous institutions
Introducing Western Religions
Introducing Eastern Religions
Religion and Conflict in Global Literatures
American Culture and Communication
U.S. History to 1876
U.S. History 1877 to Present
Western Humanities from Renaissance through Postmodernism
Selected presentations
- “Mercy at Her Feet: Prayer and Gender in the Devotional Music of Paramahansa Yogananda.” Upper Midwest American Academy of Religion Regional Conference, St. Paul, MN, April 2013.
- “Home and Back Again: Thealogical Community and Reciprocity in Pagan Liturgical Music.” American Academy of Religion Annual National Meeting, Chicago, IL, November 2012.
- “’Where He Leads Me’”: The Changing Role of Music Among African-American Adventists.” Upper Midwest American Academy of Religion Regional Conference, St. Paul, MN, April 2012.
- “Building a California Bildung: Theodore Roszak’s and Alan Watts’s Contributions to Pagan Hermeneutics.” American Academy of Religion Annual National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, November 2011.
- “Song of Mari: Male Becoming Masculine in American Paganism, 1970-1977.” American Academy of Religion Annual National Meeting, Atlanta, GA, November 2010.
Professional activity
Review Editor, Pomegranate: The International Journal for Pagan Studies