The Journal of Religion

The Journal of Religion
Title	The Journal of Religion
Discipline	Theology, Religious Studies
Abbreviation	J. Relig.
Publisher	University Presses, learned societies
Country	United States
History	1897–present
Frequency	Quarterly

Contents

The Journal of Religion is a quarterly peer‑reviewed academic journal publishing scholarship on Christian studies, comparative theology, and the history of religion. Founded in the late 19th century, it has long served as a venue for work by scholars associated with institutions such as Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, Oxford University, and Cambridge University. Contributors have included figures from the milieus of King's College London, Union Theological Seminary (New York), Duke University, Columbia University, and University of Chicago.

History

The journal was established amid debates in the era of William James, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, and Sigmund Freud, alongside contemporaneous periodicals like Theological Studies, Harvard Theological Review, and Journal of Ecclesiastical History. Early editorial boards featured scholars connected to Andover Theological Seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary, Yale Divinity School, and Union Theological Seminary (New York), and engaged with movements such as Higher Criticism, the Social Gospel, and the revivalist networks around Billy Sunday and Dwight L. Moody. Throughout the 20th century the journal reflected methodological shifts associated with Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, and Gustavo Gutiérrez, while publishing work responding to events like World War I, World War II, Cold War, and the Civil Rights Movement. In more recent decades it has featured scholarship dialoguing with theorists from Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, and Edward Said and engaging with institutional contexts such as National Endowment for the Humanities, American Academy of Religion, and Modern Language Association.

The journal covers historical studies on figures such as Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards; textual analyses of documents like the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi library, and the King James Bible; and contemporary work addressing movements such as Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Islamic Revivalism. Comparative pieces place Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Sikhism, and Confucianism in dialogue with Western traditions, while interdisciplinary studies intersect with fields linked to Harvard Law School, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of California, Berkeley. Thematic issues have examined topics tied to events like the Second Vatican Council, the Reformation, the Great Awakening, and the Partition of India, and engaged debates concerning thinkers such as Friedrich Schleiermacher, Søren Kierkegaard, and John Wesley.

Editorial governance has historically involved scholars affiliated with Princeton University, Yale University, Harvard University, University of Chicago, and Columbia University and professional organizations including the American Academy of Religion and the Society for Biblical Literature. Editorial boards typically include specialists in patristics, medieval studies, modern theology, and religious history from institutions like Oxford University, University of Notre Dame, Emory University, and Duke University. Articles undergo anonymous peer review involving reviewers from networks connected to King's College London, Victoria University of Wellington, Australian Catholic University, and McGill University. Special issues are often guest‑edited by researchers with affiliations to centers such as Wesley Theological Seminary, The Catholic University of America, Union Theological Seminary (New York), and research institutes funded by entities like the John Templeton Foundation.

Published quarterly by university presses and scholarly societies with distribution through libraries at institutions including Library of Congress, British Library, Bodleian Library, Vatican Library, and consortia such as HathiTrust and JSTOR. Subscriptions are held by academic departments at Harvard Divinity School, Yale Divinity School, Princeton Theological Seminary, Duke Divinity School, and seminaries like Regent College and Westminster Theological Seminary. Digital access is integrated with platforms maintained by publishers associated with Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, University of Chicago Press, and Routledge, and distributed through indexing services used by libraries at New York University, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell University.

The journal has published influential articles addressing canonical scholarship on authors such as Origen, Irenaeus, Ambrose of Milan, Thomas Cranmer, and John Calvin; methodological interventions inspired by E.P. Sanders, N.T. Wright, John S. Kloppenborg, and Elaine Pagels; and interdisciplinary essays engaging with thinkers like Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, Cornel West, and Kwame Anthony Appiah. Special issues have shaped debates around topics tied to anti-Semitism, colonialism, slavery, decolonization, and feminist theology represented by scholars from Union Theological Seminary (New York), Claremont School of Theology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and University of Cape Town. The journal's citation impact and cultural reach are noted in bibliographies produced by organizations such as American Council of Learned Societies and indexing by Web of Science and Scopus.

The journal is abstracted and indexed in major services used by researchers at Princeton University, Harvard University, Yale University, University of Chicago, Columbia University, Oxford University, Cambridge University, and Stanford University through databases like ATLA Religion Database, EBSCOhost, ProQuest, Scopus, and Web of Science. Library cataloging uses standards associated with Library of Congress, Dewey Decimal Classification, and cooperative systems such as OCLC WorldCat. Classification and discoverability are supported by partnerships with entities such as CrossRef, ORCID, and digital preservation efforts at Portico and LOCKSS.

Category:Academic journals