George Marsden

George M. Marsden (born February 25, 1939) is a historian who has written extensively on the interaction between Christianity and American culture, particularly on Christianity in American higher education and on American evangelicalism. He is best known for his award-winning biography of the New England clergyman and theological writer Jonathan Edwards, a prominent theologian of Colonial America.^[1]

Biography

Marsden attended Haverford College, Westminster Theological Seminary, and Yale University, completing a Ph.D. in American history under Professor Sydney Ahlstrom. He taught at Calvin College (1965–1986), Duke Divinity School (1986–1992), and as Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at The University of Notre Dame (1992–2008).^[2] As of 2017 Marsden is Emeritus Professor of History University of Notre Dame.^[3]

Awards

• 2004 Bancroft Prize for Jonathan Edwards: A Life.
• 2004 Merle Curti Award
• 2005 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion^[2]

Selected works

• Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970).
• Fundamentalism and American culture : the shaping of twentieth century evangelicalism, 1870-1925. (New York, Oxford University Press, 1980).
• Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991).
• The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
• Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995).
• The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
• Jonathan Edwards: A Life. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
• A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).
• The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief. (New York: Basic Books, 2014).
• C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity: a Biography. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).

References

Further reading

• Daren Dochuk, Thomas S. Kidd, and Kurt W. Peterson (eds.), American Evangelism: George Marsden and the State of American Religious History. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014.