Religious Studies Professor Stafford Betty was born into a Catholic family in Mobile, Alabama, the son of an economics professor teaching at the local Jesuit college. He was naturally attracted to religion from an early age.

After a short stint as a US Army engineer officer, he enrolled in a theology program at Fordham University in New York City. For his PhD dissertation, he translated from Sanskrit a 16th century Hindu theological text. From there, he took a job at California State University in Bakersfield, where he has taught courses for over three decades on the religions of the world (especially India), death and afterlife, philosophy of religion, and religion in literature.

He has published six books, most recently The Afterlife Unveiled (2011), and dozens of articles and essays on a wide variety of subjects. Two of these books are novels. A third novel, The Imprisoned Splendor, will be published by White Crow Books in autumn 2011.

Stafford thinks of himself as a Hindu Christian on some days, and a Christian Hindu on others. He has a deep conviction in the reality of spirit beings and worlds and is sympathetic to reincarnation. With his wife he attends the local Anglican church on Sunday mornings while keeping his unorthodox beliefs to himself. He has four sons and a daughter. He bikes to work and swims for exercise, and golf is his hobby.