Dr. John Pottenger has been a National Endowment for the Humanities research fellow at UCLA and UC Berkeley on the philosophy and history of the scientific revolution; a Mellon Foundation seminar director at the College of William and Mary on liberation theology; a guest speaker at Moscow State University, USSR, on American political science; a visiting professor at the Romanian-American University in Bucharest on public policy and democracy; a guest lecturer at the Institute for World Economy of the Romanian Academy on American politics; and a lecturer and workshop facilitator for the U.S. Department of State in Egypt, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan on civil society.
Dr. Pottenger's research focuses on theoretical issues in classical Platonic philosophy, modern political theory, contemporary political theology, religion and civil society, radical theories of hermeneutics, and Marxist class analysis. To date, he has published three books: The Political Theory of Liberation Theology: Toward a Reconvergence of Social Values and Social Science (State University of New York Press, 1989), Reaping the Whirlwind: Liberal Democracy and the Religious Axis (Georgetown University Press, 2007), and, his newest book, Philosophical Foundations of the Religious Axis: Religion, Politics, and American Political Architecture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). He has also contributed numerous articles to edited volumes and journals, including work published in Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, Central Asian Survey, International Journal of Social Economics, and American Review of Politics, among others.
"Averroes and Medieval Rationalism: Toward Religious Pluralism of the Modern Era." In The Pilgrimage of Philosophy: A Festschrift for Charles E. Butterworth, eds. René M. Paddags, Waseem El-Rayes, and Gregory A. McGrayer, 222-39. South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2019.
"The Intellectual Foundation and Political Construction of American Religious Pluralism," in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religion and Politics in the U.S., ed. Barbara A. McGraw, 18-32. U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016.
"Millennial Groups and American Pluralism." In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religion and Politics in the U.S., edited by Barbara A. McGraw, 113-25. Chichester, United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons, 2016. DOI: 10.1002/9781118528631. ch10
