Grant Wacker


Grant Wacker is a historian of religion in America.

Education

Wacker is a graduate of Stanford University and of Harvard University.

Career

Wacker taught in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1977 to 1992. In 1992 Wacker moved to Duke Divinity School, where he was the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History until his 2015 retirement. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of eight books, including Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture, and America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation, both published by Harvard University Press. Winner of two distinguished teaching awards, Wacker has authored more than thirty journal articles and book chapters, more than one hundred book reviews, and op-eds and essays in magazines and newspapers. He is past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, past president of the American Society of Church History, and a former senior editor of Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture. He is an advisory editor of Books and Culture, The Christian Century, Fides et Historia, and Religion and American Culture. Since 2010 he has served as a trustee of Fuller Theological Seminary.

Personal life

Wacker lives with his wife Katherine in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where they are lay members of Orange United Methodist Church.