Books

Worthy of the Calling: Biographies of Paul & Lela Swalm Hostetler, Harvey and Erma Heise Sider, and Luke Jr. and Doris Bowman Keefer (with Beth Hostetler Mark and AnnaRuth Sider Osborne)

This edited volume collects biographies of three twentieth century leaders of the North American Brethren in Christ Church, a denomination rooted in the Anabaptist, Pietist, holiness, and evangelical traditions. Taken together, the biographies explore the experiences of Brethren in Christ couples engaged in pastoral ministry, missionary work, church administration, and theological education.

For a review of the book, see John Hawbaker’s review in Brethren in Christ History and Life

Articles & Book Reviews

My scholarship has appeared in a number of academic journals, including Church History, Fides et Historia, Mennonite Quarterly Review, Brethren in Christ History and Life, The Conrad Grebel Review, The Covenant Quarterly, and more.

For a complete list of my publications, check out my curriculum vitae.

Current Projects

Dissertation — “Sacred Subjects: Christianity, Commemoration, and Religion’s Presence in the Past.” This project examines the ways in which Protestant Christian communities in the United States have created institutions of public memory—museums, archives, historical societies, monuments, and more—and the purposes to which they have put these institutions over time. In short, it seeks to understand how and why Protestants have interpreted their pasts in public and the political, social, and cultural work that these interpretations have been made to perform. Tracing these practices from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries, it offers five case studies of different Protestant groups—Presbyterians, Methodists, African Methodist Episcopalians, Mennonites, and evangelicals—and the varied commemorative practices they have undertaken. Ultimately it argues that, across more than a century, public commemoration by Protestants has transformed from a means of claiming cultural authority and prestige to a tool for mobilizing culture warriors.

Current Book Project — Storyteller: The Life and Times of E. Morris Sider. This book is a biography of one of the most important scholars of the Brethren in Christ tradition whose work as a historian, college professor, editor, and public intellectual has significantly deepened the denomination’s engagement with and knowledge of its past. Under contract with the Brethren in Christ Historical Society.