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Meet Amar

Amar D. Peterman is an emerging, Indian American scholar working at the intersection of faith and public life. He is an award-winning author, sought-after speaker, and consultant for some of the leading faith-based organizations and institutions in the United States.  His first book, This Common Life: Seeking the Common Good Through Love of Neighbor is forthcoming with Eerdmans Publishing Co.

In all his writing, research, and scholarship, Amar seeks to equip the Christian church to engage faithfully, critically, and consistently in the complex issues of our religious and civic life today through beautiful and compelling theology that emphasizes the nuanced lived reality of Christians and is modeled after the concrete person of Jesus Christ.

Amar was adopted from Delhi, India and raised in the cornfields of Northeast Wisconsin. He moved to downtown Chicago to attend college and soon after earned a degree in Theology from the Moody Bible Institute where he served as President of the Student Theological Society there, as well as Teaching Assistant to Dr. Ashish Varma. In the city, Amar met a community of Desi (South Asian) students who brought together their ethnicity and evangelical faith into a robust practice of Christianity that moved Amar to explore his own Indian-adoptee experience as a location from which he could practice his faith.

These questions led Amar to Princeton, where he earned a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary in 2022. Amar's program concentrated on public theology and American religious history under renowned historian, Heath W. Carter. There, he served as a Research and Teaching Assistant to Drs. Carter and Raimundo César Barreto, Vice-President of the seminary’s Asian Association, and Senior Editor of Lived Theology in Asian America, a publication of the Center for Asian American Christianity. 

Before founding Scholarship for Religion and Society, LLC, Amar served as Assistant Director at Neighborly Faith and then Director of the Center for Empathy in Christian and Public Life at the Ideos Institute. Today, along with his consulting firm, Amar continues to write as a regular columnist for Sojourners Magazine and publish in media outlets such as Christianity Today, the Christian Century, the Berkley Forum, the Anxious Bench, and other publications on faith, society and the common good. 

Amar is also currently a Program Manager at Interfaith America (formerly Interfaith Youth Core), the largest multifaith NGO in the United States. Following in the vision of the organization, in this role Amar works to inspire, equip, and connect leaders and institutions to unlock the potential of America’s religious diversity.

Amar and his wife Emīlija currently reside in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with their dog, Penny.

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This Common Life

Join Amar for weekly thoughts on Christian and public life — on this common life.