Kendall Marchman is an Associate Professor of Religion, and has been with the Religion Department since 2018. His primary research considers the development of Pure Land Buddhist practice and belief in China during the Tang Dynasty. Additionally, he has researched and published on religious tourism in Asia. He teaches a wide range of classes surveying the religions of Asia. 

Dr. Marchman welcomes inquiries and applications from prospective graduate students pursuing an M.A.. Prospective PhD students are welcome to contact Dr. Marchman, but he is not accepting PhD students for the upcoming year. 

I am a cultural and historical anthropologist of religion, and I am especially interested in the many histories, cultural practices, and social effects of Christianity in the world. My work uses lenses from feminist theory and material religion to trace the interplay of gendered bodies, spaces, and words in particular social situations.

My book Life in Language: Mission Feminists and the Emergence of a New Protestant Subject in the series "Class 200: New Studies in Religion" (Chicago, 2025) explores the often problematic connection between "women" and "words" in Christianity. I focus on a case study of the so-called "mission feminists" in early-twentieth-century Norway - a group of women who used new language practices (new ways of speaking, listening, reading, and writing) to advocate for women's greater status in Protestant organizations. Their linguistic experiments combined their words and their bodies in different material-discursive configurations. While scholars often argue that Protestantism drives toward dematerialization, aiming to separate language from materiality, the mission feminists show us the opposite: they give us a glimpse into the material-discursive multiplicity of Protestant modern subjects.

My current book project is a theoretical introduction to concepts from feminist new materialism and related conversations that can help us better understand the unusual, complicated relations that have developed between subjects and objects in Protestant Christianity, with the working title New Keywords for the Study of Protestantism.

Dr. Jason Roberts joined the Department of Religion at the University of Georgia in 2014. He earned a B.A. in Religion from Ashland University (Ohio) in 2004, an M.A. in Systematic Theology from Marquette University (Wisconsin) in 2008, and his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Marquette in 2013 with an emphasis in Theological Ethics.

With graduate degrees from a renowned Jesuit university, Dr. Roberts’s teaching and research interests focus broadly on Roman Catholic understandings of theology and ethics. Among Catholic thinkers the work of theologian Karl Rahner continues to be a main source of influence and inspiration. Beyond these more general topics, Dr. Roberts draws from thinkers in a number of Christian traditions to investigate the relationship between theology and the natural sciences, especially where this interaction concerns what it means to be human (Christian Anthropology) and the ethical implications thereof. Much of his research, including his doctoral dissertation, seeks to reformulate perennial Christian symbols of human self-identity (like the image of God and knowledge of good and bad/evil) in light of findings and theories in the evolutionary and cognitive sciences, as well as the works of biblical scholars and thinkers in the philosophy of science and the ongoing dialogues among the fields of science, theology, and ethics. With these interdisciplinary interests, Dr. Roberts also serves as affiliate faculty to the University of Georgia's Sustainability Certificate Program.

Dr. Jodie Lyon joined the Department of Religion at the University of Georgia in 2011. She earned an M.A. in Theological Studies in 2002 from Asbury Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Southern Methodist University in 2010 with an emphasis in the field of Systematic Theology. Before coming to UGA, Dr. Lyon taught as an adjunct at Southern Methodist University and Methodist Theological School in Ohio. 

Recent publications of Dr. Lyon's include entries on "sin" and "work" in the Common English Bible: Women's Study Bible, a chapter entitled, "The Humble Place of Humility in Reinhold Niebuhr's Ethics" in Paradoxical Virtue: Reinhold Niebuhr and the Virtue Tradition, and a chapter on "eschatology" in The Oxford Handbook on Reinhold Niebuhr.

In addition to her work on Reinhold Niebuhr, Dr. Lyon’s teaching and research interests include understandings of sin in the Christian tradition, sexual ethics, feminist theology, the problem of evil in religion, and the relationship between human freedom and divine grace in Christian thought.