John Farina

John Farina

John Farina

Associate Professor

Religion and Society; Religion and Law; American Religious History

John Farina is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at George Mason University. He was the editor-in-chief of the award-winning Paulist Press Classics of Western Spirituality series (65 vols.) and Sources of American Spirituality series (25 vols.) as well as the general editor of the Crossroad/Herder and Herder Spiritual Legacy series (12 vols.). Prior to coming to George Mason, he was a Senior Fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. There, he directed the Catholicism and Civic Renewal program, sponsored by the Henry Luce Foundation. That project explored the links between Catholicism and civil society, incorporating the disciplines of theology, law, and history. He has also practiced corporate and church-state law and published articles on current topics on law and religion. He was a member of the Healthcare Practice Group at the firm of Ice Miller LLP of Indianapolis, Indiana.

Prof. Farina specializes in the areas of religion and society, law and religion, American religious history, and the history of Western spirituality.

He holds degrees from Vassar College (BA), Yale University (MDiv), Columbia University (PhD), and New York University School of Law (JD).

Current Research

Dr. Farina is currently at work on The Intelligible Sphere: Religion in the Twenty-first Century, a book on religion and civil society.

Selected Publications

Prof. Farina was editor-in-chief of the critically acclaimed Paulist Press 65 volume Classics of Western Spirituality series and general editor of the 25 volume Sources of American Spirituality series. He edited the 12-volume Spiritual Legacy series for the Crossroad Publishing Company. His own writings includes An American Experience of God: The Spirituality of Isaac Hecker (Paulist Press, 1982) and Great Spiritual Masters (Paulist Press 2002), a popular presentation of classical writers for today’s reader. He is the editor of Isaac T. Hecker, the Diary: Romantic Religion in Ante-Bellum America (Paulist Press, 1998), Beauty for Ashes: Spiritual Reflections on the Attack on America (Crossroad, 2002), which won the Catholic Press Association award for Best Book in Spirituality 2001, and The Legacy of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin with James Salmon, S.J. (Paulist Press, 2011).