Though trained in religious studies generally, Wildman's scholarly work initially focused on one religious tradition,
Christianity, especially its beliefs and worldviews. His first book,
Fidelity with Plausibility (1998), analysed the plausibility of central Christian beliefs in the context of the contemporary physical and human sciences and the history of encounter with the other religions. Since then, Wildman's philosophy of religion has broadened as he has attempted to interpret religion as a social, cultural, and
evolutionary phenomenon. This broadening has included a longstanding interest in the comparative study of world religious traditions and involvement in a series of publications on interdisciplinary methodology and practice spanning the humanities and sciences as they relate to religion. The definitive expression of Wildman's philosophy is his six-volume Religious Philosophy series. The first volume,
Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry, outlines a program for revitalizing the philosophy of religion by making it consistently comparative—attending to all human religions rather than advocating on behalf of one favored tradition—and massively multidisciplinary, drawing insights from the scientific, social scientific, and humanistic inquiries that bear upon questions in philosophy of religion. Volume two,
In Our Own Image, provides a systematic comparative analysis of the relative strengths and weaknesses of three classes of ultimacy models: agential-being models that conceive God as a person with intentions and agency, subordinate-deity models such as process theism that conceive God as less than ultimate, and ground-of-being models that eschew theological anthropomorphism and identify God with nature's valuational depths. Not yet published, the third volume,
Science and Ultimate Reality, will continue the second volume's reverent comparative competition between ultimacy models, now focusing on how fundamental physics and biology differentially impact the plausibility of ultimacy models. Volume four,
Science and Religious Anthropology, considers the impact of contemporary physics and biology upon different religious conceptions of the human person and argues for a religious naturalist theological anthropology that affirms the reality, meaningfulness, and supreme value of human religious quests, while denying that supernatural entities are needed to understand human religiousness. The fifth volume,
Religious and Spiritual Experiences, interprets religious and spiritual experiences as intense and profoundly meaningful, yet naturalistically grounded in brains and bodies and capable of being enhanced and controlled with a variety of technologies, old and new. Volume six,
Effing the Ineffable, explores how we use religious language to make sense of the most profound aspects of human experience and to plumb the mystical depths of reality, conceiving the inconceivable and saying the unsayable. Wildman also publishes trade nonfiction, such as
Spirit Tech: The Brave New World of Consciousness Hacking and Enlightenment Engineering (with Kate Stockly); spiritual meditations on mysticism, such as
God Is… Meditations on the Mystery of Life, the Purity of Grace, the Bliss of Surrender, and the God Beyond God; and works of fiction, such as
The Winding Way Home. Along with neurologist
Patrick McNamara, also at Boston University, Wildman founded the nonprofit Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion in 2007, an independent scientific research institute that pursues research and public outreach on the scientific study of religious and non-religious worldviews and lifeways. In 2011, the Institute began publication of
Religion, Brain, & Behavior, a peer-reviewed academic journal whose advisory board includes such figures as biological anthropologist human evolutionary biologist
Joseph Henrich, religion scholar
Ann Taves, sociologist of religion
Nancy Ammerman, and many of the leading figures in the
scientific study of religion and the cognitive science of religion. In 2016, Wildman founded the nonprofit Center for Mind and Culture, a non-profit research institute that uses computer modelling and data analytics to tackle complex social problems such as child trafficking, religious radicalization, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, social integration of immigrants and refugees, and many other critical issues arising out of the “mind-culture nexus.” In 2022, Wildman founded Wildhouse Publishing, a "nonprofit independent publisher that exists to enliven the spiritual quests of people outside or on the margins of established religious and spiritual traditions". A small indie press, Wildhouse Publishing has fiction, nonfiction, and poetry imprints. In 2024, the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion, the Center for Mind and Culture, Wildhouse Publishing, and several other initiatives merged under an umbrella nonprofit organization, Just Horizons Alliance, which is dedicated to "fusing knowledge and wisdom for a more just and hopeful future." Just Horizons Alliance conducts academic research, produces an AI ethics curriculum, publishes books on expansive spirituality for a secular and increasingly post-religious age, and catalyzes conversations among thought leaders. Wildman is also known for pastoral research into ideological differences in Christian denominations, particularly the theoretical and practical meaning of the distinctions among liberal, evangelical, and moderate Protestants in the United States. This work has led to books such as
Lost in the Middle: Claiming an Inclusive Faith for Christians Who Are Both Liberal and Evangelical, and
Found in the Middle: Theology and Ethics for Christians Who Are Both Liberal and Evangelical. His work in this area has been influenced by such figures as
Protestant theologians
Friedrich Schleiermacher and
Paul Tillich, comparative religion scholar
Huston Smith, and philosophers
John Searle and
Robert Neville. Wildman is a founding member of the
International Society for Science and Religion, and a longtime member of the
American Theological Society (serving as its president in 2016–2017), the
American Academy of Religion, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Religious Naturalist Association. A festschrift on Wildman's work was published by SUNY Press in 2022: LeRon Shults and Robert Cummings Neville, eds.,
Religion in Multidisciplinary Perspective: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Approaches to Wesley J. Wildman. A special journal issue dedicated to his work was published in the
American Journal of Philosophy and Theology in 2024. Wildman was invited to deliver an intellectual autobiography at the annual meeting of the Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought in 2021. ==Selected publications==