Contact Information
Iona College Department of Religious Studies
715 North Ave.
New Rochelle, NY 10801

Phone: (914) 637-2742
Fax: (914) 633-2248
E-Mail: bbrown@iona.edu


Education
JD Law: New York University, 1986.
PhD History of Religions: Fordham University, 1981.
BS Psychology and Theology, summa cum laude: Fordham University, 1971.


Departmental Information and Courses
Dr. Brown joined the faculty of the Religious Studies Department in the fall of 1987, specializing in the History of Religions.  He is currently Associate Professor and teaches Iona's core course in Religious Studies, RST 203 Introduction to the Study of Religion.  His approach examines the phenomenon of religion from a variety of common themes using salient aspects of religious traditions to illustrate and exemplify.  Thus the course examines religion as the quest for self-discovery through its study of the Hindu tradition; religion and the experience of divine revelation through its study of the Islamic tradition; religion as transforming self-liberation through its study of the Buddhist tradition; and religion and the natural world through its study of Native American tribal traditions.  The course concludes with a consideration of religious pluralism and the challenge it presents for interreligious dialogue.   Dr. Brown also teaches RST 308- The Enlightened Mind: The Buddhist Path of Wisdom and Compassion; RST 315-The Sacred Universe; RST 310-The Religious Traditions of China; and RST 410-Religion and the Constitution.


Professional Interests
Dr. Brown is interested in the legal, moral, and spiritual dimensions of humanity's relationship with the natural world.  Among his publications are articles which have addressed the ecological implications of the Buddhist and Native American tribal traditions, as well as contemporary jurisprudence on the conflicting values of land as sacred reality or as mere property.  As a Catholic Historian of Religion, he remains deeply interested in interreligious dialogue particularly between the Buddhist and Christian traditions.  Along with Sr. Kathleen Deignan of the Religious Studies Department, he is the co-founder of the Iona Christian-Zen Meditation Group.


Professional Affiliations
Dr. Brown is a member of the Catholic Theological Society of America, the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies; the American Teilhard Association; and the New York State Bar Association.


Professional Research and Publications
Dr. Brown is the author of two major works.  The first is The Buddha Nature: A Study of the Tathagatagarbha and Alayavijnana (Motilal Banarsidass, Dehli: 1991; reprint 1994).  One of the fundamental tenets of Mahayana Buddhism is the inherent potentiality of all animate beings to attain the supreme and perfect enlightenment of  Buddhahood.  Dr. Brown's book examines the ontological presuppositions and the corresponding soteriological-epistemological principles that sustain and define such a theory. His second book is entitled Religion, Law and the Land: Native Americans and the Judicial Interpretation of Sacred Land (Greenwood Press: Westport, CT, 1999). Examining a series of court decisions made during the 1980s regarding the legal claims of several Native American tribes who attempted to protect ancestrally revered lands from development schemes by the federal government, this book looks at important questions raised about the religious status of land.  The tribes used the First Amendment right of free exercises of religion as the basis of their claim, since governmental action threatened to alter the land which served as the primordial sacred reality without which their derivative religious practices would be meaningless.  Dr. Brown argues that a constricted notion of religion on the part of the courts, combined with a pervasive cultural predisposition towards land as private property, marred the Constitutional analysis of the courts to deprives the Native American plaintiffs of religous liberty.

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