Religious ethics; religion and conflict; Christian thought; religion and politics/public life; just war tradition; human rights; religion, ethics and international affairs; justice; sovereignty; war crimes tribunals; death penalty.

John Carlson’s research explores how religious and ethical inquiry invigorates our understanding of political life. He received his B.A. in political science from Vanderbilt University and his Ph.D. in religious ethics from The University of Chicago Divinity School, where he also was a founding member of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, serving as the project coordinator for the University of Chicago office (2000-2003).

Professor Carlson is coeditor of, and contributor to, two books: The Sacred and the Sovereign: Religion and International Politics and Religion and the Death Penalty: A Call for Reckoning. He is also series co-editor of the Eerdmans Religion, Ethics, and Public Life Series. Since arriving at ASU, he has published several chapters and articles from journals including Journal of Religious Ethics, Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, and Journal of Military Ethics. Currently, he is working on a monograph entitled Justice This Side of Heaven: Human Nature, Religion, and the Moral Order of Politics, a political-theological examination of how ideas about human nature and humanity’s relation to the divine shape and limit our political pursuits of justice. He is also editing a volume (with historian Jonathon Ebel) on religion, violence, and America.

Professor Carlson serves as a co-principal investigator of two ASU research projects funded by the Ford Foundation: Public Religion, the Secular, and Democracy and Teaching and Talking about Religion in Public (a “Difficult Dialogues” initiative) for which he is also project coordinator. He also directs ASU’s new Undergraduate Certificate in Religion and Conflict, which grew out of the Difficult Dialogues project.

Religion, War, and Peace
Religion, Ethics, and International Affairs
Justice: Theology, Philosophy, and Politics
Theories of Justice and Religion

“The Morality, Politics, and Irony of War: Recovering Reinhold Niebuhr’s Ethical Realism,” Journal of Religious Ethics 36, no. 4 (December 2008), pp. 621-653.

“Winning Souls and Minds: The Military’s Religion Problem and the Global War on Terror,” Journal of Military Ethics 7, no. 2 (2008), pp. 85-101.

“Is There a Christian Realist Theory of War and Peace? Reinhold Niebuhr and Just War Thought,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 28, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2008), pp. 133-161.

“Discerning Justice in the Trial and Execution of Saddam Hussein” in David Linnan, ed., Enemy Combatants, Terrorism, and Armed Conflict Law: A Guide to the Issues (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2008), pp. 307-326.

“How Shall We Study Religion and Conflict? Challenges and Opportunities in the Early Twenty-first Century” (with Matt Correa), St. Antony’s International Review (Oxford, UK) (Jan, 2008), pp. 13-30.

“War” in Erwin Fahlbusch, Jan Milic Lochman, John Mbiti, Jaroslav Pelikan, Lukas Vischer, and Geoffrey W. Bromiley, eds., The Encyclopedia of Christianity, Vol. 5 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans-Brill, 2008), pp. 707-718.

“God, War, and the Secular: Varieties of Religious and Ethical Traditions,” Barry Law Review (Fall 2006), pp. 1-20.

“God's Disbelief and Ours: Religious Perils and Possibilities of Human Rights,” Religion and Human Rights (May 2006), pp. 5-15.