Scholarship & Teaching
Professor Smith was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy (N.H.), St. John's College (Annapolis), Virginia Theological Seminary (Alexandria), and the Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley). His academic and teaching specialties include philosophy of religion, African American religious studies, liberation theology, and religion and violence, in which areas he teaches both in Emory's undergraduate Department of Religion and Graduate Division of Religion. He is the author of Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America (Oxford, 1994), and co-editor with Mark Wallace (Swarthmore) of Curing Violence: Essays on Rene Girard,(Polebridge, 1994). Click-on this highlighted text--resume--to view a concise resume with a biographical sketch. Professor Smith received the 1994 American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence for Conjuring Culture.

Conjuring Culture

Curing Violence

Research & Memberships
Professor Smith is a member of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), and a founding member of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R): an international scholarly society dedicated to explore the relationship between religion and violence in the generation and maintenance of culture, for which he convened at Emory the 1999 annual meeting: Violence Reduction in Theory & Practice: From Primates to Nations.  He is also active in Emory's pioneering Law & Religion Program, in which he is specifically engaged in developing "A Normative Practice of Truth and Reconciliation" as informed by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Service & Related Vocations
From 1991-98 Professor Smith was the founding director of the Atlanta Chapter of the National Coalition Building Institute (NCBI), an international consulting and training organization based in Washington, D.C. that specializes in diversity training, prejudice reduction, and intergroup conflict resolution. In addition he is an active leader in the International Reevaluation Counseling Communities (RC or "Co-Counseling"), a worldwide and grassroots peer counseling and activist movement.  Professor Smith is also an active church leader in the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta and co-convener of the Atlanta Chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians (UBE).

Recent Initiatives
Professor Smith has recently convened Thurman Reconciliation Initiatives (TRI), a new research and consulting partnership that provides "faith-based resources for conflict transformation and social change," as highlighted below:

"Religions Transforming Religions /Worlds"
"Eucharistic Social Change: A Concise Theology and Practice"
"After Violence: Towards A Normative Practice of "Truth & Reconciliation"