Grant Albert Wacker (born 1945) is an American historian of Christianity in the United States.

Education

Wacker is a graduate of

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

(BA, philosophy) and of

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

(PhD, religion).

Career

Grant Wacker is the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke Divinity School. He taught in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1977 to 1992. In 1992 he moved to Duke Divinity School. He partly retired in 2015 and fully retired in 2020. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of eight books, including ''Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture'' (2001) and ''America's Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation'' (2014), both published by

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retir ...

, and One Soul at a Time: The Story of Billy Graham (Eerdmans, 2019). Winner of two distinguished teaching awards, Wacker has authored more than thirty journal articles and book chapters, over one hundred book reviews, and numerous op-eds and essays in general and in religious magazines and newspapers. He is past president of the

Society for Pentecostal Studies The Society for Pentecostal Studies (SPS) is an American scholarly association of biblical scholars, theologians, and others who are members of Pentecostal churches or are involved in the Charismatic Renewal. It was founded in 1970. The members o ...

, past president of the

American Society of Church History The American Society of Church History (ASCH) was founded in 1888 with the disciplines of Christian denominational and ecclesiastical history as its focus. Today the society's interests include the broad range of the critical scholarly perspectiv ...

, and a former senior editor of '' Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture''. He is an advisory editor of '' The Christian Century'' and '' Religion and American Culture''. From 2010 to 2021 he has served as a trustee of

Fuller Theological Seminary Fuller Theological Seminary is an interdenominational Evangelical Christian seminary in Pasadena, California, with regional campuses in the western United States. It is egalitarian in nature. Fuller consistently has a student body that compr ...

Personal life

Wacker lives with his wife Katherine in Cary,

North Carolina North Carolina () is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 28th largest and List of states and territories of the United ...

. They are active members of a local United Methodist Church.

References

External links

An interview with Grant Wacker
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wacker, Grant 1945 births American historians of religion American United Methodists Duke Divinity School faculty Harvard Divinity School alumni Living people Methodist scholars Presidents of the American Society of Church History Stanford University alumni University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty