Dr. Byron R Johnson

Byron Johnson is distinguished professor of the social sciences at Baylor University. He is the founding director of the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR) as well as director of the Program on Prosocial Behavior. Johnson is a faculty affiliate of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, and is co-executive director of the Center for Faith and the Common Good at Pepperdine University. In 2016, he co-founded the Religious Freedom Institute, based in Washington, DC. Byron is a leading authority on the scientific study of religion, the efficacy of faith-based organizations, and criminal justice. Recent publications have examined the impact of faith-based programs on recidivism reduction and prisoner reentry. He has been the principal investigator on grants from private foundations as well as the Department of Justice, Department of Labor, Department of Defense, National Institutes of Health, and the United States Institute for Peace, totaling more than $80 million. He is the project co-director of the Global Flourishing Study, a five-year panel study with annual data collection on approximately 200,000 people from around the world. Byron is the author of many journal articles and a number of books, including: Uneasy Allies: Evangelical and Jewish Relations (2007), More God, Less Crime (2011), The Angola Prison Seminary (2016), The Quest for Purpose (2017), The Restorative Prison (2021), Objective Religion: Freedom, Politics, Secularization (2023), and The Death of Religion? (2024).

Volunteers that work tirelessly to address societal social problems like drug and alcohol addiction, homelessness, offender rehabilitation, prisoner reentry, and natural disasters.

I have had the good fortune of having multiple mentors at different stages of my life.

Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It, Jon Clifton