Dennis Owen, a retired adjunct professor at St. Leo University in Gainesville, Fla., died Sept. 21, 2014. He was 70.
Owen graduated from the University of Rochester in 1966 and held a one-year fellowship at the Colgate Rochester Divinity School before entering Princeton. He earned a Ph.D. in religion in 1974. He and his first wife, Cathy, were resident advisers in Brown Hall during the early years of coeducation at Princeton. He began his teaching career at Trenton State College (now the College of New Jersey).
He retired from the department of religion at the University of Florida, Gainesville, after teaching there for more than 25 years. He twice received awards for excellence in undergraduate teaching. Later, he also taught as an adjunct professor at Central Florida College in Ocala.
Owen had a lifelong academic interest in using cross-disciplinary analysis to interpret religious movements and in the impact of religion on larger cultural and political forces. This was exemplified in his book, The New Religious Political Right in America, which he co-authored in 1981. He was also an avid student of religious diversity and how it was changing the American religious landscape.
He is survived by his second wife, Anne Raduns-Owen; three children from his first marriage; and three stepchildren.
Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.