Dr. Stephen Lloyd-Moffett

Steve Lloyd-Moffett is an international scholar of Religion and Culture and Professor of Religious Studies at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.  After an undergraduate degree in Economics and Film Studies at Claremont McKenna College, he lived in monasteries around the world with a Thomas J. Watson Foundation fellowship before starting a brief peripatetic career as a management consultant with Boston Consulting Group.  After a year driving down to Tierra Del Fuego and a summer exploring Southeast Asia, he eventually received a MA and PhD in Religious Studies from University of California at Santa Barbara and a Masters of Theology from St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York.  His initial research was on the rise of monasticism in early Hinduism and Christianity, but has subsequently published on the spiritual life of Cesar Chavez, religion in modern Greece, Islam in America, neurology of mystical experiences, the spirituality of winemaking and wine drinking, and contemporary intentional communities.  As a board member of the International Communal Studies Association, he has been an international leader in the study of communal living.  As a local public scholar, he has offered over 250 public lectures, as well as writing an occasional column in the San Luis Obispo Tribune and a frequent voice on our local NPR and other podcasts.  As a builder, he has designed and built two homes, a dozen smaller cabins, and many other building projects.  As a vigneron with his partner Amy, he has made 16 vintages of wine and cultivated a frustrating vineyard of Syrah and Grenache.  His sons, Basil and Phineas, grew up part-time at the community he co-founded, the Lavra, and are both hoping to be teachers after college. 

Curriculum Vitae