Thomas H. Lake Scholars are senior faculty members of the Department of Religious Studies at IUPUI named to this position for a three-year appointment. Lake Scholars pursue a program of research, teach a class, and produce a book related to a special topic on religion and philanthropy.

David M. Craig

The current Lake Scholar is David M. Craig. His project is entitled: “Health Care as a Social Good: Religious Values and American Democracy.”

The opening phrase of the U.S. Constitution, We the People, unites and divides Americans. The appeal is for unity, but this unity arises only from the many. Some Americans stress that we stand or fall together in a shared endeavor of forming a more perfect union that includes all of us in a supportive society. Other Americans see the strength of the nation in the people’s individual liberties and achievements, making personal initiative, not government, the means to a better society. Philanthropy occupies a middle ground as people act on their respective visions through charitable donations, nonprofit organizations and voluntary service. These cooperative initiatives open up civic spaces where can people deliberate over shared values that transcend our political factionalism.

This project explores the moral conversations about U.S. health care transpiring within two civic spaces—inside religious health care organizations and among interfaith activists. My interviews with one hundred people who work for Catholic or Jewish health care organizations or who are members of an interfaith coalition that lobbied for Massachusetts’ health care reform law teach the need to view U.S. health care as not a private benefit or public right, but as a social good. The book explores how religious values can support this reconception of health care and join mutual care with responsible stewardship in a system that we the people can live with.

Professor Craig plans to pursue his interests in religious congregations’ role as service providers and community organizers in a new project on the tensions between the quantitative languages of accountability used by funders and the qualitative languages of moral purpose and religiously-formed ends used by congregations.

Thomas J. Davis

Tom Davis’s Lake Scholar project was entitled "Family, Friend, Foe? The Relationship of Religion and Philanthropy in Religious Philanthropic Organizations."

It has been argued that "philanthropy inevitably has a two-sided character in which kindness and privilege experience an uncomfortable marriage to one another. . . . philanthropy's forms are inextricably wedded to the particular forms of dominance and privilege in each historical time and each historical place" (Philanthropy in the World's Traditions, ed. Warren F. Ilchman, Stanley N. Katz, and Edward L. Queen II [Indiana University Press, 1998], 20, 21). What is more, if philanthropy is, as it has been suggested, a means by which individuals realize their values (ibid., xiv), there will be some level of conflict inherent in the functioning of any philanthropic activity. This is especially true in religious philanthropies, where there are religious worldviews at work that understand the philanthropic activities to be tied to their understanding of the divine and its mandates.

Within this framework, the Lake Scholar hosted a symposium in October 2010 that addressed the relationship of religion and philanthropy, both in some broad, general ways and also within the context of specific religious philanthropic organizations. The work of the symposium will result in an edited-book.

Professor Davis is also in the early stages of a project that explores the history of exegesis of one of the so-called counsels of perfection uttered by Jesus in Matthew 19:21: "If you would be perfect, take and sell your possessions, and give to the poor. . . ."

Thomas J. Davis, Ph.D., is Professor of Religious Studies and Professor of Philanthropic Studies at the IU School of Liberal Arts at IUIPUI. He graduated with a B.A. from West Georgia College in 1979, from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary with an M.Div. in 1982, and from the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in 1992. His area of interest is the history of Christian thought, and he writes extensively on the Reformation, particularly on John Calvin and Martin Luther. He is a fellow of the International Congress for Calvin Research. He has served, since 1989, as Managing Editor of Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation. Professor Davis is the author of eight books: four are academic (The Clearest Promises of God: The Development of Calvin's Eucharistic Teaching [1995], John Calvin [2005], This Is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought [2008], and John Calvin's American Legacy [2010]), two are in the death-and-dying/grief genre (By the Water's of Babylon: One Family's Journey through Illness [1995] and God in My Grief: The Music of Grace When Loss Lives On [1998]), and two are novels (The Christmas Quilt [2000] and The Aluminum Christmas Tree [2005]. An ninth book is currently under contract (tentatively titled Through the Eyes of Faith: Twenty Centuries of Christianity as Seen by Twenty Christians). He served as editor or co-editor for 13 publications from the American Theological Library Association (indexes to multi-author works, indexes to book reviews, and subject bibliographies). In addition, he is the author of numerous scholarly articles and presentations.

William J. Jackson

The first Lake Scholar, from 2005-2008, was William J. Jackson. The title of his completed book is: The Wisdom of Generosity: An American Reader in Philanthropy, an anthology of readings representing images of giving, generosity and compassion in the historical American imagination. Click here to learn more about it.

William J. Jackson, Ph.D., is Professor of Religious Studies at the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts. He graduated with a B.A. from Lyndon State College in 1975, an M.T.S. from Harvard University in 1977, an M.A. from Harvard University in 1979, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1984. His academic interests include the comparative study of religion, Asian arts and literature, South Indian bhakti (devotion) in the lives and works of singer-saints; and Fractal Geometry in the Humanities - recursive patterns in music, literature, art, and architecture. Dr. Jackson was named Research Fellow, Bellagio Research Center, Italy (Rockefeller Foundation) in 2000. The same year, he was also honored to be part of the Contemplative Practice Fellowship Program, American Council of Learned Societies. His publications include Heaven's Fractal Net: Retrieving Lost Visions in the Humanities (Indiana University Press, 2004); Tyagaraja-Life and Legacy: Songs of Three Great South Indian Saints (Oxford University Press); Tyagaraja and the Renewal of Tradition: Translations and Reflections (Motilal Banarsidass); J.L. Mehta on Heidegger, Hermeneutics and Indian Tradition (E.J. Brill); and articles on poets and creative thinkers involved in the renewal of traditions.