Dr. Grant Wacker is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke Divinity School. He specializes in the history of Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, World Missions and American Protestant thought. Winner of two distinguished teaching awards, Dr. Wacker has authored more than thirty journal articles and book chapters, more than one hundred book reviews, op-eds and essays in magazines and newspapers. He is also the author of seven books, including Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (2001) and America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (2014). From 1997 to 2004, Dr. Wacker served as a senior editor of the quarterly journal, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture. He is past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies and of the American Society of Church History, and a trustee of Fuller Theological Seminary.
Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. Previously, he was a senior editor at The Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com. He is also the author of Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class (2005) and the co-author, with Reihan Salam, of Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream (2008). He is also the film critic for National Review.
His newest book is titled Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics. He charts institutional Christianity’s decline from a vigorous, mainstream, and bipartisan faith through the culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s to the polarizing debates of the present day.