Kelly James Clark
Kelly James Clark (born March 3, 1956) is an American philosopher noted for his work in the philosophy of religion, science and religion, and the cognitive science of religion. He is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Professor at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids Michigan. Biography. Clark received his PhD from the University of Notre Dame, where his dissertation advisor was Alvin Plantinga. He has held professorships at Calvin College, Oxford University, University of St. Andrews, Notre Dame & Gordon College. He also served as Executive Director for the Society of Christian  Philosophers from 1994 to 2009. Clark's books include "God and the Brain", "Strangers, Neighbors, Friends", "Religion and the Sciences of Origins", "Abraham’s Children", "Return to Reason", "The Story of Ethics", "When Faith Is Not Enough", and "101 Key Philosophical Terms of Their Importance for Theology", many of which have been translated into multiple languages. In 1995, his book "Philosophers Who Believe" was named one of Christianity Today’s Books of the Year. That book detailed the spiritual and intellectual autobiographies of philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Basil Mitchell, Mortimer Adler, Richard Swinburne, Frederick Suppe, Linda Zagzebski , and Nicholas Rescher. Interfaith Work. Clark is an international advocate for interfaith cooperation, focusing on the Abrahamic religions. As of October 2016, he is project director for “Abrahamic Reflections on Science and Religion” a Templeton Foundation project which brings together 36 scholars from 14 countries to reconcile issues in the fields of science and religion. Scholars include Nidhal Guessoum, Rana Dajani, Nathan Aviezer, & Robert Koons, among others. Clark has lectured around the world and has served as director for international conferences on science and religion, interfaith cooperation, & Chinese philosophy. He has worked extensively with the John Templeton Foundation, organizing many  interfaith symposiums, notably “Liberty and Tolerance in an Age of Religious Conflict” at Georgetown University on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. That conference inspired a book of the same name in which fifteen influential practitioners of the Abrahamic religions argued for religious liberty and tolerance from their own faith traditions. Contributors included former United States president Jimmy Carter, Indonesia's first democratically elected president Abhurrahman Wahid, Rabbis for Human Rights co founder, Rabbi Arik Asherman, Rana Husseini, Nurit Peled-Elhanan, the philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff & theologian Miroslav Volf. The book earned praise from pioneers for peace such as Bishop Desmond Tutu . He also writes a regular column for the Huffington Post which confronts Islamophobia and antisemitism while also combating religious extremism.