Fr. Peter Phan, PhD

Father Peter Phan brings the U.S. church into dialogue with global perspectives and contextual theologies. A former president of The Catholic Theological Society of America and The American Theological Society, Phan knows what is happening in a variety of other Christian denominations and nonChristian religions and has served on global commissions and projects. The Vietnam native is the Ignacio Ellacuria, S.J. Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He emigrated to the United States in 1975 and has earned three doctorates. Phan taught philosophy at age 18 at Don Bosco College in Hong Kong. He has taught at The University of Dallas, The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., Union Theological Seminary in New York, Elms College in Chicopee, Mass., and St. Norbert’s College in De Pere, WI. In 2001, Phan became the first non-Anglo elected president of The Catholic Theological Society of America. In 2010, he received the John Courtney Murray Award, the society’s highest honor for outstanding and distinguished achievement in theology. Phan’s writings deal with the theology of icons in the Orthodox Church, patristic theology, eschatology, and the history of Christian missions in Asia. His books include Christianity with an Asian Face; In Our Own Tongues; Being Religious Interreligiously; and The Joy of Religious Pluralism. His writings have been translated into Arabic, Italian, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Serbian, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, and Vietnamese.