Sep 14, 2017 - Dr. Bruce Gordon, the Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale Divinity School and an award-winning author, will serve as the 2017 Carls-Schwerdfeger History Lecturer on Thursday, October 19. He will deliver his main lecture on “What Happened to the Bible in the Reformation?” at 7:15 p.m. in Union University’s G. M. Savage Memorial Chapel. In the afternoon, Gordon will speak at 1:40 about “The Many Faces of John Calvin” in Salon II of Union’s Carl Grant Events Center. Both lectures are free and open to the public.
An internationally recognized scholar on late medieval and Reformation history, Gordon is the author, editor, or co-editor of 11 books. His authored books include: John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2016); Calvin (Yale University Press, 2009); The Swiss Reformation (Manchester University Press, 2002); and Clerical Discipline and the Rural Reformation: The Synod in Zurich, 1532-1580 (Peter Lang, 1992). He has edited or co-edited the following works: Following Zwingli: Applying the Past in Reformation Zurich (Ashgate Press, 2014); The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine (Oxford University Press, 2013); Shaping the Bible in the Reformation: Books, Scholars and Their Readers in the Sixteenth Century (Brill, 2012); Architect of Reformation: An Introduction to Heinrich Bullinger, 1504-1575 (Baker Academic, 2004); Hans R. Guggisberg’s Sebastian Castellio: Defender of Religious Toleration (Ashgate Press, 2003), which Gordon also translated; The Place of the Dead in Late Mediaeval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Scolar Press, 1996). In addition, Gordon has written numerous book chapters and scholarly articles.
Recognitions have come Gordon’s way on several occasions. The University of Zurich granted him an honorary doctorate in 2012 for his extensive and exceptional work on the Swiss Reformation. His book The Swiss Reformation earned a Choice Magazine Award as an “Outstanding Publication” in 2003. In 1990, Gordon received the Samuel Rutherford Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in history from the University of St Andrews. Gordon has also been honored with several prestigious scholarships, fellowships, and grants, including a Horace W. Goldsmith Award from Yale University in 2015 to create a massive open online course (MOOC).
Prior to his appointment to the faculty at Yale Divinity School in 2008, Gordon taught at the University of St Andrews (1994–2008), and served as a teaching assistant at the University of Toronto (1993–1994). He earned his PhD in history at the St Andrews in 1990.