J. Gordon Melton
ISR Distinguished Senior Fellow
Email J. Gordon Melton
Curriculum Vitae
Dr. J. Gordon Melton has accepted the invitation to become a Distinguished Senior Fellow of Baylor University’s Institute for Studies in Religion. Dr. Melton is the director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbra, California. His acceptance of his position with ISR carries with it the understanding that he will be developing a set of joint projects between ISR and the Santa Barbara-based Institute. The first of these projects will be a comprehensive census of the American Buddhist and Hindu communities to be conducted in 2010.
Dr. Melton is a graduate of Birmingham-Southern College (B.A., 1964), Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary (M.Div. 1968), and Northwestern University (Ph.D. 1975). He is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church.
In 1968 he founded the Institute for the Study of American religion and has remained it's director for the last 41 years. The institute is devoted to organizing, motivating, and producing research-based studies and educational material on North American Religion. It has been responsible for the publication of more than 400 reference and scholarly texts since its founding, including multiple editions of the Melton’s Encyclopedia of American Religions (8th edition, 2009).
In 1985, the Institute, which was founded in Evanston, Illinois, moved to Santa Barbara, California. At that time the Institute donated its research library to the Davidson Library at the University of California—Santa Barbara, where it now exists as the J. Gordon Melton American Religion Collection. Dr. Melton is also a research specialist with the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California—Santa Barbara. He is currently finishing the editing of the second edition of the award-winning Religions of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Belief and Practice, due to appear in 2010.
Dr. Melton is a pioneering scholar in the field of New Religions Studies and helped to create the sub-discipline. He sits on the international board of the Center for Studies in New Religions (CESNUR) based in Turin, Italy, the primary academic association focusing studies of new and minority religions.
Dr. Melton is the author of more than thirty-five books and numerous scholarly articles and papers. He currently resides in Santa Barbara with his wife Suzie. His daughter Melanie Newhouse, the mother of four, resides in suburban Washington, D.C.
