Faculty Profiles

Alexander Massad

Alexander Massad, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of World Religions

On Faculty since 2022




Ph.D., Intercultural Studies
Fuller Theological Seminary, 2020

M.A., Theology and Religious Studies
Georgetown University, 2015

M.A., Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures
University of Virginia, 2010

B.A., History (Religion: Minor)
Trinity University, 2008

Missio Dei and the Religious Other: A Muslim-Christian Comparative Theology of Witnessing. Leiden: Brill. (Forthcoming)

“Polemicist, Apologist, or Missionary: Rashīd Riḍā’s Ṭarīq al-Da‘wa.” The Muslim World (Forthcoming, Fall 2022)

Massad, Alexander and William Dyrness. “Toward Enriched Ways of Knowing: The Multiple Roles of Aesthetics in Interfaith Encounters.” Georgetown Companion to Interreligious Studies, edited by Lucinda Allen Mosher, 117-118, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2022

“Who is the ‘Other?’ Reconsidering Salvation Through Classical Islamic Thought.” The Religious Other: Towards a Biblical Understanding of Islam, the Qur’an and Muhammad, edited by Martin Accad and Jonathan Andrews, 341-355, Cambria, UK: Langham Global Library, 2020.

“Epistemological Openness: A Neo-Calvinist Theological Response to Vatican II” Catholicism Engaging Other Faiths: Vatican II and Its Impact, edited by Vladimir Latinovic, Gerard Mannion, and Jason Welle, 175-194, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

Panels Organized

2019 “New Methods in Neo-Calvinism,” Kuyper Conference, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

2017 “Missing Voices from the Missiological Study of Islam,” American Society of Missions Annual Meeting, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL.

2015 “Vatican II – Comparative Theology and Protestant Responses,” The Ninth Ecclesiological Investigations Network International Conference: Vatican II Remembering the Future – Ecumenical, Interfaith and Secular Perspectives on The Council’s Impact and Promise. Georgetown University.

Invited Talks

2019 Keynote, “Who is the ‘Other?’ Reconsidering Salvation Through Classical Islamic Thought,” Middle East Consultation, Arab Baptist Theological Seminary, Beirut, Lebanon. June 17-21 

Papers Presented

2019 “Raḥma Restoring Nature: Reconstructing a Theology of The Religious Other with Muslims,” Kuyper Conference, Calvin College, April 23-25.

2018 “Our Voiceless ‘Co-Belligerents’: Why Muslim Political Insights are Critical for Neo-Calvinism,” 5th European Conference on Neo-Calvinism: Neo-Calvinism and Europe, Leuven, Belgium. August 29-31.

2017 “The Pedagogical Problem – Teaching Islam at Seminaries” American Society of Missions Annual Meeting, Wheaton College, June 16-18.

2017 “Another Revealed Religion? Abraham Kuyper’s Jealous Aversion to Islam,” The American Academy of Religions Western Region, Rosemead, CA. March 17-19.

2016 “What To Do With a Third Wheel? Kuyper on Islam as a “Revealed” Religion,” 4th European Conference on Neo-Calvinism: Another Religion? Neo-Calvinism and Islam. Theological University of the Reformed Churches, Kampen, Netherlands. August 25-26.

2015 “Epistemological Openness: A Reformed Theological Response to Vatican II,” Ninth Ecclesiological Investigations Network International Conference: Vatican II Remembering the Future – Ecumenical, Interfaith and Secular Perspectives on The Council’s Impact and Promise. Georgetown University, May 21-24.

2014 “Are You Certain? The Theory of Knowledge in al-Qushayrī’s Risāla,” Middle Eastern History and Theory Conference, The University of Chicago, May 2-3.

2011 “A Medieval Romance: The Medieval Islamic Quarrel over Love in the Sunni and Sufi Exegetical Tradition,” Middle Eastern History and Theory Conference, The University of Chicago, May 13-14.

  • American Academy of Religion 
  • Middle Eastern Studies Association
  • American Society of Missiology 
  • Comparative Theology
  • Islamic Studies
  • Islamic Philosophy
  • Salafism
  • Missiology
  • Neo-Calvinism
  • Reformed Theology
  • Comparative Theology
  • Comparative Religious Ethics
  • Islamic Thought
  • Sufism
  • Mysticism
  • Reformed Theology
  • Missiology
  • RELI 225 Major World Religions
  • RELI 214 World Religions: Middle East
  • BITH 221 OT in Three Traditions