People

Hauser Center Researchers and Staff

Brent Coffin

Senior Research Fellow

Brent Coffin is a Senior Research Fellow in the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations.

Coffin is currently developing teaching resources and strategies for educational innovations on public religious leadership. His research interests focus on the questions of moral agency and ethical capacity for public action.

Coffin has taught courses at the Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Divinity School . His publications include Taking Faith Seriously (edited with Mary Jo Bane and Richard Higgins, Harvard University Press 2005), and Who Will Provide: The Changing Role of Religion in American Social Welfare (edited with Mary Jo Bane and Ronald Thiemann, Westview Press 2000).

A minister ordained in the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. , Coffin served congregations in the South Bronx , Trenton and Minneapolis . He earned a B.A., magna cum laude, in sociology and philosophy from Dartmouth College , his Masters of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, and his doctorate in religion and society from Harvard University .