Randall Balmer

Who is Randall Balmer?

Randall Herbert Balmer is an American author and a historian of American religion. He taught at Barnard College and Columbia University for twenty-seven years before moving to Dartmouth College in 2012, where he was named the Mandel Family Professor in the Arts & Sciences. He is also an Episcopal priest. He earned the Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1985. He has been a visiting professor at Dartmouth College and at Rutgers, Princeton, Drew University, Emory University, Yale and Northwestern universities and at Union Theological Seminary, where he was also adjunct professor of church history. He has also taught in the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He was visiting professor at Yale Divinity School from 2004 until 2008.

Following his ordination in 2006 and concurrent with his academic responsibilities, Balmer served as part-time rector of two Episcopal parishes in Connecticut: St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington and Christ Episcopal Church in Middle Haddam. In addition to his academic writing, Balmer has published commentaries in newspapers across the country, including the Des Moines Register, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Dallas Morning News, the Omaha World Herald, the Los Angeles Times, the Anchorage Daily News, the Hartford Courant, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, New York Newsday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and the New York Times, among others. His work has also appeared in the Nation, the New Republic, the Washington Post Book World, and the New York Times Book Review.