Russell Tracey McCutcheon (born 1961) is a Canadian religion scholar who earned a PhD in religious studies from the University of Toronto in 1995.
In 2005, McCutcheon was elected President of the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion, headquartered at Rice University.
This controversy centered on a rather polemical exchange between McCutcheon and Robert A. Orsi, who held a teaching position at Harvard University and Harvard Divinity School, with Orsi referring to McCutcheon's book, The Discipline of Religion, as "chilling".
Orsi also made the comment, "the assumption appears to be that the scholar of religion by virtue of his or her normative epistemology, theoretical acuity, and political knowingness, has the authority and the right to make the lives of others the objects of his or her scrutiny.
McCutcheon responded with a paper included in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion entitled, "It's a Lie.