David Steinmetz

Who is David Steinmetz?

David C. Steinmetz is Amos Ragan Kearns Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the History of Christianity at Duke Divinity School. He was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006.

David C. Steinmetz is an American historian of late medieval and early modern Christianity.[1] He received his BA in English from Wheaton College in Illinois, his BD from Drew University, and his ThD from Harvard University. In 1961 he was ordained an elder in the Methodist Church. Before coming to Duke University, where he spent most of his academic career, he taught for five years at Lancaster Theological Seminary. He later served as a Visiting Professor at Harvard, Notre Dame, and Emory universities.

In 1959 Steinmetz married Virginia Ruth Verploegh, an English teacher from Chicago whom he met at Wheaton Virginia earned her MA in English at Temple University and her PhD at Duke University. She taught for several years at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina, before she was appointed as Duke’s first director of graduate student career services. The couple have two children: Claire Elise and Matthew Eliot.