Dr Bernard Doherty

Profile

Dr Bernard Doherty is Course Director in the School of Theology and a Research Fellow for the Centre for Public and Contextual Theology at Charles Sturt University based at St Mark’s National Theological Centre in Canberra. He is also an adjunct lecturer in the School of Law at the University of Notre Dame, Sydney and an Honorary Research Fellow at INFORM (Information Network Focus on Religious Movements) based at King’s College, London.

Bernard Doherty is a graduate of Macquarie University. Following his PhD, Bernard was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University in the United States where he worked on a series of projects on New Religious Movements in Australia and abroad and on applying social science methodologies to the study of early Christianity. Bernard has published in a number of academic journals including the Journal of Religious History, Nova Religio, the International Journal for the Study of New Religions, the Alternative Spirituality and Religions Review, Phronema, and the Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society. Bernard’s research interests are wide-ranging and include New Religious Movements, Patristics, Australian religious history, Church and State issues, religion and the media.

Would be especially interested in supervising topics on:

pre-Nicene Patristics
New Religions
Religion and Popular Culture
Religion and Film
Spiritualism
Satanism and Satanic Panic
Witchcraft
Australian Catholic History

Publications

Peer Reviewed Article: The Road to Schism: Yves Dupont and the Latin Mass Society of Australia 1966-1977. Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society [Forthcoming]
Book Chapter:Colonial Justice or Kangaroo Court? Public Controversy and the Church of Scientology in 1960s Australia Alternative Spirituality and Religions Review [Forthcoming]
Book Chapter: The Brethren Movement The Brill Handbook of Contemporary Christianity ed. Stephen Hunt [Forthcoming]
Peer Reviewed Article: Cyril & Hypatia: Tracing the Contours of an Anti-Christian Myth, Phronema [Forthcoming].
Peer Reviewed Article: The Smoke of Satan on the Silver Screen: The “Catholic Horror Film” through the lens of the Post-Vatican II Malaise. Religions [Forthcoming]
Peer Reviewed Article: Sensational Scientology! The Church of Scientology and Australian Tabloid Television. Nova Religio 17.1 (2014), 38-63.
Peer Reviewed Article: The ‘Brethren Cult Controversy’: Dissecting a Contemporary Australian ‘Social Problem.’
Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review 4.1 (2013), 25-48.
Peer Reviewed Article: Quirky Neighbors or the Cult Next-Door? An Analysis of Public Perceptions of the Exclusive Brethren in Australia, International Journal for the Study of New Religions 3.2 (2012), 163-211.
Published Address: Preservation and Paradox: Challenges & Responses to Secularization on the Evangelical Fringe.
LUCAS 2014 Journal of the Australian Evangelical History Association) [Forthcoming].
Review Essay: Carole M. Cusack & Alex Norman (eds.), Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review 5.1 (2014), 149-165.
Review Essay: Paul Veyne, When Our World Became Christian: 312-394 (London: Polity, 2010), Phronema 29.1 (2014), 137-144.
Book Review: Andrew Dawson, Santo Daime: A New World Religion (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), Journal of Religious History 37.4 (2013), 588-590.