Emerging Spirit @ The United Church of Canada Emerging Spirit @ The United Church of Canada

Diana Butler Bass is an author, speaker, and independent scholar specializing in American religion and culture.  She holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of six books including the best-selling Christianity for the Rest of Us, released by Harper San Francisco in September 2006. That book was named as one of the best religion books of the year by Publishers Weekly and Christianity Century, won the Book of the Year Award from the Academy of Parish Clergy, and was featured in a cover story in USA TODAY.

She is currently working on two more books. After Jesus, a history of Christian spirituality and social justice, is scheduled for spring 2009 release from Harper One. Pilgrimage, part of the “Seven Ancient Practices” series, will be published in 2010.

From 2002 to 2006, she was the Project Director of a national Lilly Endowment funded study of mainline Protestant vitality—a project featured in Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Beliefnet.com, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Although her work specializes in mainstream and liberal Protestantism, she also serves as a member of the national board of directors for Emergent Village and as an advisory board member of Synagogue 3000, a Jewish renewal organization.  She is part of Sojourner’s Red Letter Christians and is a regular contributor to the God’s Politics blog. She is currently Senior Fellow at the Cathedral College of the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.  Diana regularly consults with religious organizations, leads conferences for religious leaders, and teaches and preaches in a variety of venues.  

Diana has taught at Westmont College, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Macalester College, Rhodes College, and the Virginia Theological Seminary. She has taught church history, American religious history, history of Christian thought, religion and politics, and congregational studies. From 1995-2000 she wrote a weekly column on American religion for the New York Times Syndicate. She has written widely in the religious press, including Sojourners, Christian Century, Clergy Journal, and Congregations. She has appeared on PBS, FOX News, and NPR.

Diana’s other books include The Practicing Congregation: Imagining a New Old Church (Alban, 2004), which has been lauded as one of the most important books on mainline Protestantism in the last two decades and has been featured in The Christian Century, Sojourners, and The Door.  In addition, she has written From Nomads to Pilgrims: Stories from Practicing Congregations (Alban, 2006), Broken We Kneel: Reflections on Faith and Citizenship (Jossey-Bass, 2004), Strength for the Journey: A Pilgrimage of Faith in Community (Jossey-Bass, 2002) earned a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was named one of the best religion books of 2002 by the same publication, and her dissertation, Standing Against the Whirlwind: Evangelical Episcopalians in 19th Century America (Oxford University Press, 1995), which won the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer prize of the American Society of Church History.  She has been twice nominated for the Grawemeyer Award.  

She, her husband, Richard Bass, and their family live in Alexandria, Virginia.  She is a member of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in downtown Washington, D.C.  In addition to her family and church, she loves mystery novels, wine tasting, walking, Duke basketball, art museums, quiet evenings at home, interesting conversation with people who want to change the world, and vacationing pretty much anywhere with warm breezes, palm trees, and a beach.

See her website, dianabutlerbass.com, for more information.

Sponsored by the Emerging Spirit campaign of The United Church of Canada, Vancouver School of Theology, and St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church.

For more information, email emergingspirit@united-church.ca.

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