Westar Institute

The Westar Institute, founded by Robert W. Funk in 1985, is a member-supported nonprofit educational institute with a twofold mission:^[1]

• To foster collaborative, cumulative research in religious studies
• To communicate the results of the scholarship of religion to a broad, non-specialist public

Westar is located in Salem, Oregon, on the campus of Willamette University.^[1] The institute has a publishing arm in the form of Polebridge Press, which publishes books, media, and two journals:^[2]

• Forum, an academic journal which publishes scholarly articles on the historical Jesus, Christian origins, and related fields.
• The Fourth R, a bimonthly magazine that publishes religious studies research in nontechnical language for at a general audience.