 | Religious Studies Department
Fields: Global Catholicisms, Hinduism, Catholic esotericism, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses, religion and violence, religion and the erotic |
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| Email: mschmalz@holycross.edu Office Phone: 508-793-2557 Office: Smith 404 PO Box: 27A Office Hour |
Biography
Mat is the founding editor of the Journal of Global Catholicism and professor of religious studies. He grew up in Western Massachusetts and worked as a volunteer for the Glenmary Order in the rural Oklahoma before attending Amherst College where he earned his B.A. in 1987. After managing a homeless shelter established by the Pallottine Fathers and Brothers in the South Bronx, Mat went to the Divinity School of the University of Chicago and, in 1998, was awarded his Ph.D. in History of Religions.
Mat has published over one hundred academic articles and chapters, essays, encyclopedia entries, and reviews that engage global Catholicism, Catholic theology and spirituality, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Watchtower movement (Jehovah’s Witnesses).
Mat has received Century, Watson, USED Fulbright, American Institute of Indian Studies, Wabash, and Whiting Fellowships and resided in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka for a total of four years as a student and researcher.
Mat is co-editor of Engaging South Asian Religions: Boundaries, Appropriations, and Resistances and also, with Thomas Landy of the McFarland Center, is presently working on a sixty-chapter reference volume entitled The Catholic World, contracted for the “Worlds” series published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis Press.
Mat has authored a memoir, Mercy Matters: Opening Yourself to the Life Changing Gift, and, with co-author Alonzo Gaskill of Brigham Young University, written Understanding Our Catholic Neighbors: A Guide for Latter Saints. In addition to being the founding and executive editor of the Journal of Global Catholicism, Schmalz serves or has served on the editorial boards of Asian Horizons, Ethnologia Polonia, Christian Higher Education, Brill’s Global Catholicism Series, and Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.
Mat regularly contributes to media coverage of religion and religious issues. He has published opinion pieces in Newsweek, Salon, The Washington Post, Fortune, USNews & World Report, Commonweal Magazine, The National Catholic Reporter, and The Conversation. He has also provided expert commentary to USA Today, The New York Times, ABC's Good Morning America, NPR, BBC1 and BBC5, Agence France-Press, CNBC, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and NBC News. Overall, Mat is grateful to have had 400+ media appearances through a variety of media platforms and his writings for The Conversation, for example, have over 3 million unique page hits as of January 2025.
Mat also writes non-fiction and his work has been recognized by Pen 2 Paper and in the Best American Spiritual Writing series. He also has served as a consultant and expert witness in civil and criminal cases involving the Catholic Church as well as New Religious Movements.
Mat is a grateful husband and a father to two wonderful daughters. Mat's family also spends a lot of time with their pet pot-belly pig (Half-Pint). Mat enjoys cooking Indian, classic and alternative rock, Bollywood film and music, and, of course, all versions of Star Trek.
Selected Academic Articles
Mathew N. Schmalz“ Ad Experimentum: Theology, Anthropology and the Paradoxes of Indian Catholic Inculturation,” Theology and the Social Sciences, ed. Michael Barnes (Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 2001), 161-180.
Schmalz, Mathew N. "The Faith and Rationality of Dalit Christian Experience." Asian Horizons 5.1 (2011): 24-35
Mathew N. Schmalz, “Thinking with Nostra Aetate: From the New Pluralism to Comparative Theology,” Revisiting Vatican II: 50 Years of Renewal, Vol. I: Keynote and Plenary Papers of the DVK International Conference on Vatican II, 31 January - 3 February 2013, ed. Shaji George Kochuthara, Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications, 2014, 450-465.
Schmalz, Mathew N. "Hypostatic Union and the Subtle Body: An Analysis of Christian Yogic Practice." Asian Horizons 6.2 (2012): 353-363.
Schmalz, Mathew N. "The Silent Body of Audrey Santo." History of Religions 42.2 (2002): 116-142.
Schmalz, Mathew N. "Images of the Body in the Life and Death of a North Indian Catholic Catechist." History of Religions 39.2 (1999): 177-201
Selected Journalistic Writing
The Conversation: Taxing the rich to help the poor? Here’s what the Bible says
The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/profiles/mathew-schmalz-318095
Salon: http://www.salon.com/writer/mathew-schmalz/