Access to Worship at Native Hawaiian Shrine Denied

George M. Williams earned his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1972, specializing in religions in modern India. For 35 years he was a professor of Eastern Religions at California State University, Department of Religious Studies.
His major interest for the past two decades has been in religions that liberate and in liberal religion.  This interest has been furthered in the IARF and has led to two honorary doctorates: in 1994 from Starr King School for the Ministry and in 1996 from the United Protestant Theological School of Kolozsvár (Cluj), Romania. The American Chapter of the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF) awarded him its 1989 Distinguished Service Award for his contributions toward inter-religious cooperation and understanding. A specialist on Svâmî Vivekânanda and the Hindu Renaissance, Williams helped found the section on Hinduism in the American Academy of Religion, having served as projects director of its Electronic Publishing Committee. In both 1997 and 1998 Williams held the Shree Muherjee Chair at National Institute of Advanced Studies at Bangalore, India. He worked on projects involving preservation through digital archiving of ancient sacred texts. He held workshops for archivists and librarians from all over India on digital archiving, chief among them the works of Raja Rammohan Roy, founder of the Brahmo Samaj.
 Williams has worked for nearly three decades on understanding liberal Buddhist and Shinto groups in Japan, producing a film on "The Bodhisattva Way of Peace: Lay Buddhism in Japan," a video on “Shinichiro Imaoka: Emerson of Japan," as well as a video series on Shinto practices and rituals. He was part of the editorial team that published the English version of Rev. Dr. Yukitaka Yamamoto’s book, Kami no Michi (Way of the Kami) in 1987.  Williams was a regular presenter at several IARF congresses. He has also been active in Collegium as the chair of its history section. Williams has given guest lectures at a number of universities and seminaries in the U.S. (including Harvard), in Canada (including McGill University, Montreal, as a Distinguished Scholar), India, Japan, Hungary and Romania, as well as at the Vedanta Society in Chicago in 1988. In 1992 with his wife (Dr. Judit Gellerd as translator) he taught model courses at two major universities in Hungary, which were considered the first academic study of religion in post-communist Eastern Europe. Since retirement in 2003 Williams taught Asian religions twice for Semester at Sea. He published the Handbook of Hindu Mythology, “Cosmic Sage: Shinichiro Imaoka, Emerson of Japan” and a monograph on Shinto. Since 2009 Williams has worked with a Hawaiian faith, Kanenuiakea, helping its representatives to become a member group of IARF.