Copyright © 1999 by Leland J. White.  All Rights Reserved.

Leland J. White - biographical sketch

Dr. Leland J. White's research interests are in two areas:

the relationship between religion and culture;

the U.S. value system as expressed in law.

His agenda was set during his theological studies in Rome from 1962 to 1966, where he witnessed the Second Vatican Council in its entirety.  At the Council Catholics from across the globe,  with the generous help and advise of leaders and scholars of many religious traditions attempted to reinterpret Catholic thinking and practice to the needs of the contemporary world.

A primary victory achieved at the council was the Vatican's first recognition of the fundamental human right to religious freedom long enstablished in U.S. culture.  Implicit in this reversal of medieval teaching was the recognition that culture is inevitably a major factor in religious understanding and teaching.

To investigate culture across cultural lines, cross-culturally, Dr. White follows paths set by the social sciences, principally cultural anthropology. To pinpoint the major features of U.S. culture, and the American value system, he looks for the data embedded in U.S. law and legal traditions.

At the College of Charleston during Maymester and Summer sessions since 1994, Dr. White teaches a course on religion and society, focusing on how religion and society interact in U.S. life as exemplified in the role of religion in the marketplace and in law.

At St. John's University (New York), since 1982, Professor Leland J. White teaches a variety of courses in which he interprets religious thought and life in the framework of the culture from which they come or in which they are found. He shows, for example, how Mediterranean assumptions about persons and societies are embedded in the source materials for Christianity and how many European assumptions govern commonly cited modern materials. The objective of his courses is to enable contemporary U.S. students, for example, to identify U.S. assumptions and cultural patterns and thus rethink and reapply the religious tradition to their own situations. Dr. White regularly teaches Introduction to the Bible, The Synoptic Gospels, Jesus in Christian Thought, and Interpretation of the Bible.

Dr. White earned his B.A. at St. Mary's University (Baltimore); S.T.B., S.T.L.at the Pontifical Gregorian University (Rome); M.A. at University of Michigan; J.D. at Seton Hall University; and Ph.D. at Duke University. Before joining the St. John's University faculty in 1982, Professor White was Chair of the Religious Studies Department, Siena College. There he established and directed the Reinhold Niebuhr Institute of Religion and Culture, which has sponsored programs for academic, governmental, community and religious leaders in the Albany area since 1977.

Prior to his appointment at Siena, he was a faculty member at St. Thomas the Apostle Seminary (Kenmore, WA), St. John's Provincial Seminary (Plymouth MI) and Nazareth College (Kalamazoo, MI). He has taught and lectured at St. Bonaventure University, St. John's University in Minnesota, Creighton University, the University of Detroit, the State University of New York at Albany, and as regular summer lecturer at the College of Charleston.

A member of the Bar in both South Carolina and New Jersey since 1992, he has been a member of the Attorney Ethics Committee of the South Carolina Bar and serves as Associate Counsel to the New Jersey Law Revision Commission. He participated in the South Carolina Christian Action Council Task Force to draft the S.C. Religious Freedom Act of 1999.  He is long-time member of the American Civil Liberties Union and active in the South Carolina and Charleston Democratic parties.

Author of a wide variety of publications, he edits Biblical Theology Bulletin, a quarterly circulating in more than seventy-five countries.

Born in Charleston, ordained in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in1965, Dr. White is a priest of the Diocese of Charleston, South Carolina, and served as a delegate to the Charleston Diocesan Synod in 1995.