Recognition Week 2024: Celebrating those who Drive CUE Forward

Steven Muir has been a highly valued and respected member of the Concordia community for more than twenty years, having joined the Faculty of Arts as an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies in 2002. He came to us after previous teaching posts at the University of Calgary, the University of Lethbridge, and Mount Allison in New Brunswick.

Steven’s academic background is eclectic, perhaps foreshadowing the broad and diverse range of interests evident in his subsequent scholarship. He first completed a Bachelor of Commerce degree at the University of Calgary in 1977, then returned to the U of C some years later to complete BA and MA degrees in Religious Studies. He completed his doctorate in that field at the University of Ottawa in 1998, specializing in Early Christianity.

Before saying more about Steven’s contributions to Concordia and to the broader world of scholarship, one ought to highlight (and underline and boldface) his reputation as a teacher. Our students have always admired Steven’s abilities as a communicator, his passion for the discipline of Religious Studies, and his obvious concern for their well-being and development. Steven was an eminently student-centred teacher before “being student-centred” officially became a thing. His presence in our classrooms will be greatly missed.

A quick (and incomplete) summary of his other contributions: Steven served as Chair of the Religious Studies Department from 2007-2013, and then as Chair of the newly combined Philosophy & Religious Studies Department for a further year after that. He also put in a full seven years as Chair of our MA Program in Biblical and Christian Studies (mostly overlapping with his Chair duties for the undergraduate program).

He somehow found time too to serve both as Director of the Concordia Institute of Christian Studies and Society for the entirety of its five year mission (2015-2020), and as Faculty Lead for the very first Research Cluster at Concordia: the Interdisciplinary Travel Research Group (2014-2020). In both of those roles he put in a great deal of work organizing valuable public lectures and other events, boosting Concordia’s reputation locally and getting our name out nationally amongst scholars working in these areas of study.  

Steven’s record of service on internal Concordia committees is too lengthy and varied to recount here; still, those who have worked with him in this capacity will agree that his calm demeanour and wise, level-headed advice has done our institution much good (and no doubt kept some of us out of trouble).

In terms of his broader involvement in the scholarly world, Steven has served as Treasurer and Membership Secretary for the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies since 2006, and served a number of years as book reviews editor for the well-known Canadian journal Religious Studies & Theology. He has co-edited two scholarly anthologies (most recently the 2018 Routledge volume Early Christian Ritual Life), and has authored numerous articles in the fields of New Testament Studies, Early Christianity, Patristics, Classics, Pilgrimage Studies. He has also begun writing on a new area of interest: the history of western esotericism.

We wish Steven all the best in his new endeavours. We will miss him, and trust he will remain patient with our devious attempts to lure him back to campus for assorted events & activities.