Jeffrey Lee Stout (born September 11, 1950) is an American religious studies scholar who is Professor Emeritus of Religion at Princeton University.
His most recent book, Blessed Are the Organized: Grassroots Democracy in America (2010), takes an ethnographic turn, investigating the engaged democratic practices that he has endorsed in his previous work.
[2] He has also delivered Gifford Lectures in May 2017, with the title "Religion Unbound: Ideals and Powers from Cicero to King",[4] and plans to expand the materials into a book.
This is his answer to such thinkers as Alasdair MacIntyre and Stanley Hauerwas who believe that participants in such debates do not share enough common ground to prevent their arguments from being intractable.
Stout has been influenced by Richard Rorty and more recently Robert Brandom and, albeit with qualifications, aligns himself with the school of philosophy known as American pragmatism.