Diana Butler Bass


Diana Butler Bass is an American historian of Christianity and an advocate for progressive Christianity. Bass is currently an independent scholar who writes broadly on American religion and culture. She is the author of eight books, three of which have won research or writing awards. She earned a PhD in religious studies from Duke University in 1991 with an emphasis on American ecclesiastical history. While at Duke she studied under George Marsden. From 1995 to 2000, she wrote a weekly column on religion and culture for the New York Times Syndicate that appeared in more than seventy newspapers nationwide and has since become a popular commentator on American religion for other media outlets. Currently, she is a blogger for the God's Politics blog with Jim Wallis at Beliefnet, as well as On Faith and The Huffington Post. She is associated with Sojourners and the Red-Letter Christian movement.

Early life and education

Born on 1959, in Baltimore, Maryland, Bass grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona. Raised a United Methodist, she became an evangelical. She attended Westmont College, from which she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1981. She received a Master of Arts in Theological Studies degree in ecclesiastical history from Gordon–Conwell Theological Seminary in 1986. Studying under the supervision of George Marsden, she received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in religious studies from Duke University in 1991. Her doctoral thesis was titled Standing Against the Whirlwind: The Evangelical Party in the 19th Century Protestant Episcopal Church.
Her spiritual memoir, Strength for the Journey: A Pilgrimage of Faith in Community, records her growing dissatisfaction with conservative evangelical religion. She is now a member of the Episcopal Church.

Career

For a decade, she worked primarily as an academic before becoming an independent scholar. She began in 1991 as an assistant professor of religious studies at Westmont College, from which she was fired in 1995. She went on to serve as a history instructor at the University of California at Santa Barbara from 1995 to 1996, as a visiting assistant professor of religious studies at Macalester College from 1996 to 1997, and as an associate professor of religious studies at Rhodes College from 1997 to 2000. In 2002, the Lilly Endowment awarded Bass a major grant to support her research on mainline Protestant churches at Virginia Theological Seminary.
Bass's books range from a study of nineteenth-century evangelicalism to a contemporary ethnography of mainline Protestantism. Throughout her work, she displays an interest in the role of religion in cultural and social change. She eschews programmatic spirituality and leadership in favor of encouraging Christians to seriously practice their faith as a way to reform American churches and political life.
Two of her books, Strength for the Journey and Christianity for the Rest of Us have been named among the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly. Christianity for the Rest of Us was named book of the year by the Academy of Parish Clergy. Standing Against the Whirlwind was awarded the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize by the American Society of Church History.
Her work has been written about by USA Today, US News and World Report, Newsweek, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and other papers, including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She has also appeared on Religion & Ethics Newsweekly on PBS and is, along with Martin E. Marty, one of two scholars chosen to represent mainline Protestantism in The Life of Meaning: Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World, a book edited by the show's host, Bob Abernethy.
In 2015, she was one of the keynote speakers at the Parliament of the World's Religions, held in Salt Lake City.

Personal life

Following her first marriage, she married Richard Bass on January 18, 1997, and is the mother of a daughter, Emma. Her sister-in-law, Dorothy C. Bass, is a theologian of Christian practice.