He serves as Leroy A. Martin Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he specializes in the psychology of religion.

[4] Hood received the William James Award from the APA in 1995 "for sustained and distinguished research in the psychology of religion".

[5] Stace's work in mystical experience has received strong criticisms for its lack of methodological rigor and its perennialist pre-assumptions.

[6] Major criticism came from Steven T. Katz in his influential series of publications on mysticism and philosophy[a] and from Wayne Proudfoot in his Religious Experience (1985).

[13] To this criticism Hood et al. answer that universalistic tendencies in religious research "are rooted first in inductive generalizations from cross-cultural consideration of either faith or mysticism",[14] stating that Stace sought out texts which he recognized as an expression of mystical expression, from which he created his universal core.