Richard V. Pierard

Richard V. Pierard was born in Chicago and raised in Richland, Washington where his father worked at the Manhattan Project’s Hanford plutonium production facility. He served in the US Army in Japan, earned a BA and MA in history from California State University—Los Angeles (1958, 1959) and a PhD in modern European history from the University of Iowa (1964). He joined the faculty of Indiana State University, Terre Haute in 1964 where he served as professor of history until retirement in 2000. He then was invited to serve as a scholar-in-residence and Stephen Phillips professor of history at Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts. After retiring a second time in 2006, he relocated to Handersonville, North Carolina where he continues to be active in writing and lecturing. He was twice a Fulbright professor in Germany, and has been involved in scholarship and lecturing there as well as in Scotland, Russia, New Zealand, and India. An evangelical Christian and Baptist layperson, he has long been a controversial critic of evangelicalism and the religious right and especially civil religion. In more recent years he has devoted considerable attention to global Christianity and Baptist history. In 1957 he married Charlene Burdett, who has pursued her own career as a public librarian. They have two children, David and Cindy, and one grandson, Henry Dryden.

Biography and photo from amazon.com.