Robert C. Fuller

Robert C. Fuller, 1974

B.A., Denison University
M.A., University of Chicago
Ph.D., University of Chicago

Professor of Religious Studies
Bradley University
Peoria, Ill.


Citation awarded May, 1994

Robert C. Fuller is a professor of religious studies at Bradley University and director the university honors program. He also chairs the Intellectual and Cultural Affairs Committee on campus. He was assistant professor of religious studies from 1978 to 1983, associate professor from 1983 to 1988, and assumed his current position in 1988.

Bob earned his master’s in 1975 and his Ph.D. in 1978, both from the University of Chicago. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from Denison, where he was a religion department fellow, K.I. Brown Honor Scholar, and an A. Blair Knapp Honor Scholar.

He has been the recipient of several grants and fellowship awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities and one from the Andrew Mellon Foundation. In 1990, Bob returned to Denison as the spring semester honors symposium lecturer.

Bob has received national and international acclaim for his unique contributions in the areas of American cultural history and in discourse of the interaction between religion and the social sciences. He is the author of five books on “un-churched” spirituality and how religion is a dimension in nearly all areas of thought. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and reviews and has led national seminars and served in several consultantships.

Beyond his ability to convey religious ideas through his writing, Bob excels as a teacher of religious studies whose students call him a “dynamic speaker and inspirational teacher.” He began his undergraduate teaching career at Bradley University in 1978 and has taught at the graduate level at the University of Chicago.

Bob and his wife, Kathy ’74, live in Peoria, Ill. with their two children.