Special Issue: Writing Religion

Abstract

OnMay 19, 2011, I had the bittersweet pleasure of introducing a conference in honor of W. Clark Gilpin’s retirement from the faculty of the Divinity School. On that occasion, four of his former students, two current colleagues, and Gilpin himself engaged the subject of “Writing Religion: Representation, Difference, and Authority in American Culture.” The papers delivered on that occasion are assembled in published form in this fascicle of the Journal of Religion. W. Clark Gilpin is the Margaret E. Burton Distinguished Service Professor (now emeritus) of the History of Christianity and Theology in the Divinity School. He served on this faculty since 1984, as dean of Disciples Divinity House, as professor, as dean during the 1990s, and as the inaugural director of the Martin Marty Center (2000–2004). He has also been actively engaged in historiographic enterprises across the university, serving as director of the Nicholson Center for British Studies (2005–7) and on the executive council of the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture (2007–10). Gilpin received his BA from the University of Oklahoma, MDiv from Lexington Theological Seminary, and MA and PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School. A historian of Christianity in America and England, Gilpin is the author of, among other works, The Millenarian Piety of Roger Williams and A Preface to Theology (both published by the University of Chicago Press). To appreciate the extensive range of Clark Gilpin’s intellectual preoccupations—past and present—one needs only to name several more works for which he was co-editor or author: