Grant Wacker | |
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![]() Grant Wacker at the 2016 colloquium Mormonism in the Academy | |
Born | Grant Albert Wacker 1945 (age 77–78) |
Nationality | American |
Spouse | Katherine Wacker |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Thesis | Augustus H. Strong (1978) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | |
Sub-discipline | History of Christianity in the United States |
Institutions |
Grant Albert Wacker (born 1945) is an American historian of Christianity in the United States.
Wacker is a graduate of Stanford University (BA, philosophy, 1972) and of Harvard University (PhD, religion, 1978).
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 joined the faculty of Duke Divinity School, where he taught until he partly retired in 2015 and fully retired in 2018. [1] [2] A specialist in American Christian history, Wacker is the author or co-editor of nine books, including Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Harvard University Press, 2001), [3] America's Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (Harvard University Press, 2014), [4] One Soul at a Time: The Story of Billy Graham (Eerdmans, 2019) [5] , and more than two-hundred published articles, essays, and book reviews. He is past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, past president of the American Society of Church History, [6] a former senior editor of Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, and a senior trustee of Fuller Theological Seminary. He is an advisory editor of The Christian Century and Religion and American Culture . [7] [8] [9] Along with three teaching awards, he directed twenty-six doctoral students at UNC or Duke. [10]
Wacker is a lay member of First United Methodist Church in Cary, N.C., where he lives with his wife, Katherine Wacker.
The Third Great Awakening refers to a historical period proposed by William G. McLoughlin that was marked by religious activism in American history and spans the late 1850s to the early 20th century. It influenced pietistic Protestant denominations and had a strong element of social activism. It gathered strength from the postmillennial belief that the Second Coming of Christ would occur after mankind had reformed the entire Earth. It was affiliated with the Social Gospel movement, which applied Christianity to social issues and gained its force from the awakening, as did the worldwide missionary movement. New groupings emerged, such as the Holiness movement and Nazarene and Pentecostal movements, and also Jehovah's Witnesses, Spiritualism, Theosophy, Thelema, and Christian Science. The era saw the adoption of a number of moral causes, such as the abolition of slavery and prohibition.
Carl Ferdinand Howard Henry was an American evangelical Christian theologian who provided intellectual and institutional leadership to the neo-evangelical movement in the mid-to-late 20th century. He was ordained in 1942 after graduating from Northern Baptist Theological Seminary and went on to teach and lecture at various schools and publish and edit many works surrounding the neo-evangelical movement. His early book, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (1947), was influential in calling evangelicals to differentiate themselves from separatist fundamentalism and claim a role in influencing the wider American culture. He was involved in the creation of numerous major evangelical organizations that contributed to his influence in Neo-evangelicalism and lasting legacy, including the National Association of Evangelicals, Fuller Theological Seminary, Evangelical Theological Society, Christianity Today magazine, and the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies. The Carl F. H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity International University seek to carry on his legacy. His ideas about Neo-evangelism are still debated to this day and his legacy continues to inspire change in American social and politcal culture.
The Apostolic Assembly of the Faith in Christ Jesus is the oldest bilingual Oneness Pentecostal denomination in the United States. It was founded in 1925 and incorporated in California on March 15, 1930, and is currently headquartered in Fontana, California. Although most of its congregations are in the United States, the Apostolic Assembly has churches around the world. The current Bishop President is Bishop Felipe Salazar.
A Doctor of Divinity is the holder of an advanced academic degree in divinity.
William Franklin Graham Jr. was an American evangelist and an ordained Southern Baptist minister who became well known internationally in the late 1940s. He was a prominent evangelical Christian figure, and according to a biographer, was "among the most influential Christian leaders" of the 20th century.
Christianity Today is an evangelical Christian media magazine founded in 1956 by Billy Graham. It is published by Christianity Today International based in Carol Stream, Illinois. The Washington Post calls Christianity Today "evangelicalism's flagship magazine". The New York Times describes it as a "mainstream evangelical magazine". On August 4, 2022, Russell D. Moore—notable for denouncing and leaving the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention—was named the incoming Christianity Today Editor-in-Chief.
Richard John Mouw is an American theologian and philosopher. He held the position of President at Fuller Theological Seminary for 20 years (1993–2013), and continues to hold the post of Professor of Faith and Public Life.
Edward John Carnell was a prominent Christian theologian and apologist, was an ordained Baptist pastor, and served as President of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. He was the author of nine major books, several of which attempted to develop a fresh outlook in Christian apologetics. He also wrote essays that were published in several other books, and was a contributor of articles to periodicals such as The Christian Century and Christianity Today.
Harold John Ockenga was a leading figure of mid-20th-century American Evangelicalism, part of the reform movement known as "Neo-Evangelicalism". A Congregational minister, Ockenga served for many years as pastor of Park Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts. He was also a prolific author on biblical, theological, and devotional topics. Ockenga helped to found the Fuller Theological Seminary and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, as well as the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE).
Harvey Gallagher Cox Jr. is an American theologian who served as the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, until his retirement in October 2009. Cox's research and teaching focus on theological developments in world Christianity, including liberation theology and the role of Christianity in Latin America.
Amos Yong is a Malaysian-American Pentecostal theologian and Professor of Theology and Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary. He has been Dean of School of Theology and School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Seminary, since July 1, 2019.
Pentecostalism is a renewal movement within Protestant Christianity that places special emphasis on a direct personal relationship with God and experience of God through the baptism with the Holy Spirit. For Christians, this event commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the followers of Jesus Christ, as described in the second chapter of the Book of Acts. Pentecostalism was established in Kerala, India at the start of the 20th century.
The Centre for the Study of World Christianity (CSWC) is a research centre based in New College, the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. It was founded in the University of Aberdeen by Andrew F. Walls as the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World in 1982, but later moved by Walls to the University of Edinburgh in 1986. Its current name was adopted in 2009. The centre is currently directed by Alexander Chow and Emma Wild-Wood.
World Christianity or global Christianity has been defined both as a term that attempts to convey the global nature of the Christian religion and an academic field of study that encompasses analysis of the histories, practices, and discourses of Christianity as a world religion and its various forms as they are found on the six continents. However, the term often focuses on "non-Western Christianity" which "comprises instances of Christian faith in 'the global South', in Asia, Africa, and Latin America." It also includes Indigenous or diasporic forms of Christianity in the Caribbean, South America, Western Europe, and North America.
Brian Stanley is a British historian, best known for his works in the history of Christian missions and world Christianity.
Willie James Jennings is an American theologian, known for his contributions on liberation theologies, cultural identities, and theological anthropology. He is currently an associate professor of systematic theology and Africana studies at Yale University.
Wilbur Moorehead Smith (1894–1976) was an American theologian and one of the founding members of Fuller Theological Seminary.
Practical theology is an academic discipline that examines and reflects on religious practices in order to understand the theology enacted in those practices and in order to consider how theological theory and theological practices can be more fully aligned, changed, or improved. Practical theology has often sought to address a perceived disconnection between dogmatics or theology as an academic discipline on the one hand, and the life and practice of the church on the other.
Michael Cassidy, is a South African Christian leader, evangelist, writer and founder of Africa Enterprise, known for his initiatives at ecumenism, and reconciliation on personal, church and political levels.
Edith Lydia Waldvogel Blumhofer was a Harvard educated historian whose teaching and publications gave the study of American Pentecostalism a respected place in the history of religion and scholarly research.