George Marsden

For other uses, see George Marsden (disambiguation).

George Mish Marsden (born February 25, 1939) is an American 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 Jonathan Edwards, a prominent theologian of Colonial America.

George Marsden
Born	George Mish Marsden (1939-02-25) February 25, 1939 Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Spouse	Lucie Commeret ​ (m. 1969)​
Academic background
Alma mater	Yale University Westminster Theological Seminary Haverford College
Thesis	The New School Presbyterian Mind (1966)
Doctoral advisor	Sydney E. Ahlstrom
Academic work
Discipline	History
Sub-discipline	American history history of Christianity intellectual history
Institutions	Calvin College Duke University University of Notre Dame
Doctoral students	Diana Butler Bass Matthew Grow Thomas S. Kidd Steven Nolt Rick Ostrander
Main interests	American evangelicalism
Notable works	Jonathan Edwards: A Life (2003)

Biography

Marsden was born on February 25, 1939, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He attended Haverford College, Westminster Theological Seminary, and Yale University, completing a Doctor of Philosophy degree in American history under Sydney E. 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). As of 2017 Marsden is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. His former doctoral students include Diana Butler Bass, Matthew Grow, Thomas S. Kidd, Steven Nolt, and Rick Ostrander.

He was awarded the Bancroft Prize for his book Jonathan Edwards: A Life in 2004, the Merle Curti Award in 2004, and the Grawemeyer Award in Religion in 2005.

A Festschrift was composed in his honor in 2014. It was entitled American Evangelicalism: George Marsden and the State of American Religious History and was edited by Darren Dochuk, Thomas S. Kidd, and Kurt W. Peterson.

Selected works

• Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience. New Haven, Connecticut: 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, Michigan: 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, Michigan: Eerdmans. 1995.
• Marsden, George M. (1997). The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship. New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195122909.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-512290-9.
• Jonathan Edwards: A Life. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. 2003. ISBN 9780300096934.
• A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards. Grand Rapids, Michigan: 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, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 2016.

References

Bibliography

• Dochuk, Darren; Kidd, Thomas S.; Peterson, Kurt W., eds. (2014). "Appendix: George Marsden's Doctoral Students and Their Dissertations". American Evangelism: George Marsden and the State of American Religious History. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN 978-0-268-15855-2.
• Marsden, George M. (1966). The New School Presbyterian Mind: A Study of Theology in Mid-Nineteenth Century America (PhD thesis). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University. OCLC 13386337.
• "Marsden, George (Mish) 1939–". Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. Vol. 142. Detroit, Michigan: Gale. 2006. pp. 272–276. ISBN 978-1-4144-0544-5. ISSN 0275-7176.