Sam Houston

Assistant Professor of Religious Studies

Sam Houston is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, specializing in modern Islamic thought and comparative religious ethics.

  • PhD, Florida State University
  • MA, Boston College
  • MDiv, Princeton Theological Seminary
  • BA, Baylor University

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Sam Houston

Biography

Sam Houston, PhD, is an assistant professor of religious studies at Stetson University. He earned a bachelor of arts degree in history from Baylor University, a master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and a master of arts degree in philosophy from Boston College. He earned his doctoral degree from Florida State University, specializing in Muslim ethics and comparative religious ethics.

Prior to pursuing his doctorate, he lived for two years in Abu Dhabi, UAE, teaching English at Zayed University and traveling throughout the Middle East/North Africa region. While a graduate student at FSU, he was awarded a U.S. State Department-sponsored Critical Language Scholarship to study Arabic in Morocco.

He is a member of the American Academy of Religion and the Society for the Study of Muslim Ethics. When not teaching bright Stetson students, he enjoys running, gardening and fly fishing. 

More About Sam Houston

Areas of Expertise

  • Muslim ethics 
  • Religion and politics of the Middle East/North Africa
  • Comparative religious ethics

Course Sampling

  • One God: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
  • Muhammad and the Qur'an
  • Islam in the Modern World
  • Religious Ethics and Moral Problems
  • Between Martin and Malcolm: Religion, Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Movement

  • Modern Muslim activism
  • Political theory 
  • African American Islam and Islam in West Africa
  • Faith-based activism/community organizing in the American South

  • "Commanding Good and Forbidding Wrong." Routledge Handbook of Islamic Ethics. Edited by Mohammed Ghaly. New York: Routledge, forthcoming. 
  • "'Monks by Night and Knights by Day': Ḥasan al-Bannāʾ, Tarbīya, and the Muslim Brotherhood as Virtuous Vanguard." Religion Compass, 12/7 (July 2018), 1-11. 
  • "Sufism and Islamist Activism in Morocco: An Examination of the Tradition of 'Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong' in the Thought of ʿAbd al-Salam Yassine." Middle Eastern Studies 53/2 (March 2017), 153-65.
  • "Narrative and Ideology: The Promises and Pitfalls of Postliberal Theology." Religion and Theology 23/1-2 (2016), 161-87.
  • "Sherman A. Jackson and the Possibility of a 'Blackamerican Muslim' Prophetic Pragmatism." Journal of Africana Religions 1/4 (2013), 488-512.
  • "Does Islam Require a Secular State?: Abdullahi An-Na'im's Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari'a." Philosophy and Social Criticism 37/5 (June 2011), 621-25.