About
Michael Stoeber is Professor of Spirituality and Philosophy of Religion at Regis College, with special interests in comparative mysticism and theodicy. He is also cross appointed to the Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto (status only) and served as Scarboro Missions Chair in Interreligious Dialogue at the Msgr. John Mary Fraser Centre for Practical Theology, 2018-2021. His current research interests are in comparative issues in meditation, prayer, yoga, and afterlife beliefs, as well as topics on the intersection of spirituality and art.
Selected Publications
- “Approaches to Issues of Residential Schools through Interreligious and Interspiritual Dialogue: Some Paradoxes of “All My Relations,” Toronto Journal of Theology, 41/1 (2025): 78-95.
- “Sacred Groves or Profitable Commodities? Exploring Dispositions Toward Our Environment in Interreligious Dialogue,” in Connecting Ecologies: Integrating Responses to the Global Challenge, Gavin Flood and Patrick Riordan, eds. (Routledge: 2024): 141-164.
- Foreward to Soul-Making by Grace: Purgatory’s Past, Present, and Future by Matthew Hendzel SJ (Pickwick Publications, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2024).
- “Christianity and Yoga,” Oxford Bibliographies in Hinduism, LAST MODIFIED: 25 JULY 2023, DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195399318-0276.
- “Hindu-Christian Dialogue on the Afterlife: Swami Vivekananda, Modern Advaita Vedānta, and Roman Catholic Eschatology,” International Journal of Hindu Studies Vol. 27, No.1 (April 2023): 33-65.
- “Indigenous and Roman Catholic Canonizations of Nicholas Black Elk: Postcolonial Issues and Implications of Black Elk Speaks,” Theological Studies, Vol. 81 (3) (2020): 605-630.
- “Kuṇḍalinī Yoga in the Spirituality of Swami Vivekananda and in Modern Yoga Typologies,” Chapter 3, in Vivekanada: His Life, Legacy, and Liberative Ethics, Rita Sharma, ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield’s Lexington Press, 2021): 33-49.
- “Christianity: classical, modern and postmodern forms of contemplation,” with JaeGil Lee, in Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies, Karen O’Brien-Kop and Suzanne Newcombe, eds. (New York: Routledge, 2021): 33-49.
- “Indigenous and Roman Catholic Canonizations of Nicholas Black Elk: Postcolonial Issues and Implications of Black Elk Speaks,” Theological Studies, Vol. 81(3) (2020): 605-630.
- “Theopoetics as Response to Suffering: The Visual Art of Käthe Kollwitz in the Reformation of Practical Theodicy,” International Journal of Practical Theology, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2019): 24-38.
- “The Comparative Study of Mysticism,” The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015 [updated 2017]) 43pp. Also translated and published in the Russian periodical, Philosophy of Religion: Analytic Researches (Философия религии: аналитические исследования) (2018: 15-42).
- “Mystical Concepts, Artistic Contexts”, in the catalogue for the art exhibit Mystical Landscapes: Vincent van Gogh to Emily Carr, Katharine Lochnan, ed. (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario and DelMonico Books, Prestel, 2016), pp. 45-58. Also, translated in the anthology: “Concepts mystiques, contextes artistiques”, in Au-delà des étoiles: Le Paysage Mystique, De Monet À Kandinsky, Guy Corgeval, Katharine Lochnan, Beatrice Avanzi, Isabelle Morin Loutrel, eds., (Paris: Musee d’Orsay, 2017), pp. 44-63.
- “Mysticism in The Brothers Karamazov,” Toronto Journal of Theology, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Fall 2015) pp. 249-271.
- “Art as a Medium of Theological Imagining and Spiritual Transformation,” with Christina Labriola,in Complex Identities in a Shifting World: One God, Many Stories, Pamela Couture and Robert Mager, eds. (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2015): 255-268.
- “Exploring Processes and Dynamics of Mystical Contemplative Meditation: Some Christian-Buddhist Parallels in Relation to Transpersonal Theory”, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Summer 2015): 35-57.
- “Tantra and Śāktism in the Spirituality of Aurobindo Ghose”, in Situating Aurobindo: A Reader, Peter Heehs, ed. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013): 253-286. Also in Studies in Religion, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2009): 293-321.
- “Inter-Religious Contexts and Comparative Theology in the Thought of Evelyn Underhill: Symbolic Narratives of Mysticism and the Songs of Kabīr”, Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 26 (2013): 91-106.
- “Re-Imagining Theosophy through Canadian Art: Theosophical Influences on the Painting and Writing of Lawren Harris”, in Michael Hawley and Pashaura Singh, eds., Re-Imagining South Asian Religions: Essays in Honour of Professors Harold G. Coward and Ronald Also in Toronto Journal of Theology, Vol. 28, No.1 (2012): 81-103.
- “Mysticism in Ecumenical Dialogue: Questions on the Nature and Effects of Mystical Experience”, in Teaching Mysticism, William B. Parsons, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011): 224-245.
Research & Teaching Focus
- Spirituality
- Philosophy of Religion