Biography

David Hempton is the Alonzo L. McDonald Family Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies, John Lord O’Brian Professor of Divinity and Dean of the Harvard Divinity School. Before moving to Harvard he was University Professor and Professor of the History of Christianity at Boston University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and former Professor of Modern History and Director of the School of History in the Queen’s University of Belfast. He is a former chairman of the Wiles Trust founded by Sir Herbert Butterfield to promote innovative thinking on the history of civilization. He is the author of many books and articles, including most recently,  Methodism: Empire of the Spirit  (2005), winner of the Jesse Lee prize;  Evangelical Disenchantment: Nine Portraits of Faith and Doubt  (2008), and  The Church in the Long Eighteenth Century  (2011), winner of the Outler Prize of the American Society of Church History. He has research and teaching interests in religion and political culture, religious identities and ethnic conflicts, lived religion, Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism, the global history of Christianity, and secularization. He is currently engaged on a comparative study of secularization in Europe and the United States.