John D. Wilsey is a Georgia native whose research interests lie in the History of American Religious Nationalism, American Conservatism, and the History of American Christianity and Diplomacy.
Dr. John Wilsey is Chair of the Church History Department and Book Review Editor of The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology as well as the Associate Professor of Church History and Philosophy. Between 1992 and 2011, Wilsey taught history and Bible in middle and high school classrooms, held positions in Christian school administration, and served on pastoral staff in schools and churches in North Carolina and Virginia. From 2011–2017, Wilsey taught history and philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, with most of his teaching load in a fully accredited bachelor’s degree program in a maximum-security unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He is married to Mandy, and they have two children. He is an elder at Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky.
He has also researched and written on conservatism and American diplomacy in the twentieth century. His areas of teaching are in modern church history, history of Western thought, American patriotism and theology, history of the Black church, and American religious history. He supervises PhD dissertations in the areas of American church history and history of philosophy.
Wilsey is a Tocqueville Fellow with the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville, Research Fellow at the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy, Research Fellow at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC, and Research Fellow with the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has previously held academic fellowships with the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty as Affiliate Scholar (2016-2020); the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal as Wilbur Fellow (2023); and the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions in the Politics Department at Princeton University as William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and Public Life (2017-2018).
His work has been reviewed in such outlets as National Review, Publisher’s Weekly, Journal of Church and State, Fides et Historia, Providence, Church History, Reading Religion, Catholic Books Review, Reviews in American History, Anxious Bench, Claremont Review of Books, First Things, The American Conservative, Christianity Today, and The Federalist. He has appeared on podcasts and programs hosted by the Acton Institute, New Books Network, Current, Thinking in Public, Law and Liberty, Museum of the Bible, Family Research Council, BBC Radio Wales, 9Marks, McConnell Center, and Ben Franklin’s World.
Wilsey has contributed peer-reviewed articles in the journal Religions and in academic books published by Palgrave and Routledge. He co-edited a special peer reviewed issue of Religions on the historical interaction of nationalism and theology. He has contributed other chapters to books published by Crossway and B&H Academic and long-form articles to Modern Age: A Conservative Review and Fides et Historia. He has served as manuscript reviewer for American Political Thought, Religions, InterVarsity Press, and New York University Press and book review editor for H-AmRel of the H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online network.
Wilsey has served on the Kern Foundation Advisory Council, the Board of Directors of the Society for Values in Higher Education, the Scholar’s Council for the Center for the Electoral College, the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives Advisory Board, and the Annual Meeting Proposal Review Board for Church History as well as the Membership Committee of the Evangelical Theological Society.
Wilsey was named the 2019–2020 Tutor of the Year in Boyce College’s Augustine Honors Collegium. In addition to his work at Southern and Boyce, Wilsey has been an invited lecturer at Princeton University, Princeton Theological Seminary, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Louisville, the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, Waynesburg University, Calvin University, St. Francis University, Hannibal-LaGrange University, Charleston Southern University, Grand Valley State University, the College of Biblical Studies, Houston Baptist University, Northwest Nazarene University, the University of Wyoming, Samford University, Spring Arbor University, Ave Maria University, the Philos Project, the Religious Freedom Institute, the Russell Kirk Center, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and the Kentucky Historical Association. He has read academic papers at the Evangelical Theological Society, the Conference on Faith and History, the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Christian Scholars’ Conference, the Society for Values in Higher Education, the Society for US Intellectual History, the African American Intellectual History Society, the Ciceronian Society, the Association for the Scientific Study of Religion, and the Center for Christian Study in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society, the Ciceronian Society, the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Philadelphia Society, and the James Madison Society.
Wilsey is a columnist for World Opinions, and his other public writings have appeared in outlets such as Law and Liberty, Current, Acton’s Commentary, Christianity Today, Providence, Public Discourse, 9Marks Journal, The Gospel Coalition, Aeon, History News Network, The American Conservative, The Imaginative Conservative, Anxious Bench, Religion and Liberty, and Religion in American History. He has reviewed numerous books for Themelios, Southeastern Theological Review, Public Discourse, Fides et Historia, Westminster Theological Journal, Trinity Journal, The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, Journal of Church and State, Evangelical Quarterly, Journal of Markets and Morality, H-Diplo, Ad Fontes, and The London Lyceum.
books
God’s Cold Warrior: The Life and Faith of John Foster Dulles (William B. Eerdmans, 2021)
Democracy in America: A New Abridgment for Students (Lexham, 2016)
American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion: Reassessing the History of an Idea (InterVarsity Press, 2015)
One Nation Under God?: An Evangelical Critique of Christian America (Pickwick, 2011)