Expertise

American Religion, Pluralism, Secularism, Small Towns, Religious Liberalism, Church and State, Religious Freedom

Biography

David Mislin is a historian of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States, and his work focuses on the intersection of religion, culture, and politics. 

He is the author of Saving Faith: Making Religious Pluralism an American Value at the Dawn of the Secular Age (Cornell University Press, 2015), which was an honorable mention for the 2016 Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History, and Washington Gladden's Church: The Minister Who Made Modern American Protestantism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). He has published articles in Religion and American Culture, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, and the Journal of the Historical Society. His writing has also been featured on Salon.com, Newsweek online, and the Washington Post's Post Everything.

He is currently at work on a new book project, tentatively titled Progressive Heartlands: The Faith and Work of Religious Liberals in Small-Town U.S.A., which chronicles the influence of religiously progressive Americans in small communities throughout the nation during the twentieth century. His research for this project has been supported by the Louisville Institute and the State Historical Society of Iowa.

Website

Selected Publications

• Washington Gladden's Church: The Minister Who Made Modern American Protestantism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).
• "Roman Catholics," in Jeff Hardin, Ronald L. Numbers, and Ronald A. Binzley, eds., The Warfare Between Science and Religion: The Idea that Wouldn't Die (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018).
• "Beyond Christian Nationalism: How the American Committee on the Religious Rights and Minorities Made Religious Pluralism a Global Cause in the Interwar Era," Religions 7 (December 2016): 149.
• Saving Faith: Making Religious Pluralism an American Value at the Dawn of the Secular Age (Cornell University Press, 2015).
• "One Nation, Three Faiths: World War I and the Shaping of Protestant-Catholic-Jewish America," Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 84 (December 2015): 828-862.
• "The Cost of Inclusion: Interfaith Unity and Intra-Faith Division in the Formation of Protestant-Catholic-Jewish America," in Chris Beneke and Christopher S. Grenda, eds., The Lively Experiment: The Story of Religious Toleration in America, from Roger Williams to the Present (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).
• "'Against the Foes that Destroy the Family, Protestants and Catholics Can Stand Together': Divorce Policy and Ecumenism," in Andrew Preston, Bruce J. Schulman, and Julian E. Zelizer, eds., Faithful Republic: Religion and Politics in Modern America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).
• "'According to His Own Judgment': The American Catholic Encounter with Organic Evolution," Religion and American Culture 22 (July 2012): 133-162.
• "'Never Mind the Dead Men': The Damnation of Theron Ware and the Salvation of American Protestantism," Journal of the Historical Society 11 (December 2011): 463-491.

Courses Taught

• AMST 862: First Person America
• HIST 876: Religion in Philadelphia
• HIST 949: Honors Dissent in America
• HIST 2900: Honors Special Topics: Panic in America - A History of Our Worst Fears
• IH 851/951: The Good Life
• IH 852/952: The Common Good