George Marsden

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.

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