Paul Lakeland

I hold the Aloysius P. Kelley S.J. Chair of Catholic Studies at Fairfield University where I am also Director of Fairfield's Center for Catholic Studies. I have been teaching at Fairfield University since 1981, where I was previously Director of the Honors Program and Chair of the Religious Studies Department. I hail originally from the U.K., England to be precise. I was educated at Oxford University where I "read" (i.e., studied) English Language and Literature, the University of London, where I completed a divinity degree, and Vanderbilt University where I wrote my doctorate. I've written lots of articles and eight books. The most recent are The Liberation of the Laity: In Search of an Accountable Church (2003), which received the 2004 Catholic Press Association Award for the best book in theology, Catholicism at the Crossroads: How the Laity Can Save the Church, which also won an award from the Catholic Press Association in 2008 and, in October of 2009, Church: Living Communion. In the spring of 2010 Orbis Press published my edition of selected writings of Yves Congar, O.P., the greatest ecclesiologist who ever lived.

I am a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Catholic Theological Society of America and the American Theological Association. My academic and research interests include the Catholic Church, the Papacy, religion and literature, and the relations between religious commitment and progressive politics. I live in Trumbull, CT, with my pianist wife and we have one son who is also a professional pianist living in Princeton, NJ. I blog for Commonweal magazine on literature, and I occasionally review for the same wonderful journal. When I am not reading I am cooking.