Here’s a comment I tried to post in this thread, but had technical difficulties:

Some observations from my undergraduate institution, UW-Madison:

(1) Probably every prof covers philosophy of religion in 101, but I wonder if they recognize the value of having someone who can teach it at the higher level. At present we do have someone, and when I took it it was the most popular upper-level class I’ve seen so far. But the guy who does it is getting old, and when he retires I don’t know if it would occur to the department to continue offering it somehow. I think I’ll ask some of my profs what they think of that. But I wouldn’t be surprised, and lack of interest wouldn’t say something about phil. religion per se: contemporary analytic philosophy seems to have a problem with staying interested in things normal people are interested in.

(2) What Clayton said: A professor who shall remain unnamed once explained the general attitude towards philosophy of religion as “they think it’s a settled issue.” There’s a sense that with the possible exception of Plantinga, philosophers of religion are just grasping at straws, even when they come up with something new.

(3) We have Elliott Sober here, who mainly does philosophy of biology but has spun off that into writing about the argument from design, creationism, etc. from a skeptical perspective. I’ve heard it suggested that what he does is good as a side-pursuit, with the implication that it would be a waste of time to do full time. Departments might be reluctant to hire a William Rowe for that reason.

(4) The first four entries in my course reader for 504: Epistemology of Disagreement are philosophy of religion. Don’t know what that means, I should ask the prof.