Moving from Tolerance to Respect

"Prothero is a world-religions scholar with the soul of a late-night television comic"… Lisa Miller in a Newsweek profile. 

Professor Stephen Prothero, the foremost commentator on the religious “scene” in the United States confronts the question of how do we move beyond polite tolerance, at best, to recognizing our religious differences and truly respecting them.

The Boston University professor in the Department of Religion moves effortlessly from twittering to Hinduism, from Disney World to Socrates.  No wonder his lectures at BU are jam packed, as are his numerous public appearances.

Prothero is the author of numerous books, most recently God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter (HarperOne, 2010) and the New York Times bestseller Religious Literacy: What Americans Need to Know (HarperOne, 2007).

He is also an acclaimed and much sought-after commentator on religion.  He’s spoken on dozens of National Public Radio programs, as well as appearing on CNN, NBC, MSNBC, FOX, and PBS.

He’s been a guest on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart, "The Colbert Report," and "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and was the chief editorial consultant for the six-hour WGBH/PBS television series "God in America”. 

In addition to being a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, he has also written for the New York Times, Slate, Salon, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe.

In 2010 he was invited to speak about religious literacy at the White House. Prothero received his BA from Yale in American Studies and his PhD in the Study of Religion from Harvard. He lives on Cape Cod, and he tweets @sprothero. 

The program is sponsored by the Interfaith Council of Westport & Weston and Temple Israel.