He received his B.A. degree from the College of William and Mary in Virginia, and the M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University. In addition to numerous articles in scholarly journals, Christiano is the author of two books: Religious Diversity and Social Change (Cambridge University Press, 1987) and Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Reason Before Passion (ECW Press, 1994 and 1995). He is also co-author (with William H. Swatos, Jr, and Peter Kivisto) of Sociology of Religion: Contemporary Developments (AltaMira Press, 2002). A second edition of this text is scheduled to appear in 2007. Christiano is a past president of both the Association for the Sociology of Religion and the American Council for Québec Studies.