Darin D. Lenz
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Darin D. Lenz

Chair, Department of History
Professor, Department of History

DepartmentDepartment of History
Biola AffiliationsFaculty

Degrees

  • M.Th. University of Glasgow
  • Ph.D. Kansas State University
  • M.A. Villanova University
  • M.A. AGTS Evangel University
  • B.A. California State University, Bakersfield
  • A.A. Bakersfield College

Biography

After teaching future pastors in a small Bible college in rural India as a guest instructor, Dr. Darin Lenz felt a tug from the Holy Spirit to go to seminary and study church history. After completing his seminary degree, he went on to further historical study at Villanova University. He eventually completed a Ph.D. in History at Kansas State University with a major field in the History of Christianity under the direction of the late Robert D. Linder. His research interests span from the Reformation era through the twentieth century and his work has been published in numerous edited books and academic journals. Lenz has served in a variety of staff and faculty roles at Christian colleges on the East Coast, Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and, most recently, for ten years at Fresno Pacific University where he was a professor of History. Celebrating over two decades of marriage, his wife is a program manager for an organization that serves adults with developmental disabilities and they have two sons. A Green Bay Packers fan, he also enjoys mountain bike riding, traveling and spending time with his family.

Affiliations

  • Conference on Faith and History
  • Ecclesiastical History Society (U.K.)
  • Evangelical History Association of Australia
  • International Society for First World War Studies
  • Royal Historical Society (U.K.)
  • Scottish Church History Society (U.K.)
  • Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (U.K.)

Awards

  • Merit Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Fresno Pacific University, 2018
  • Visiting Fellow, New College, University of Edinburgh, 2017
  • Merit Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Fresno Pacific University, 2015
  • Fellow, Summer Seminar in Military History, United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, 2011
  • Phi Beta Kappa, 2009
  • Phi Kappa Phi, 2003

Publications

Book Chapters

  • “Christianity and Politics: From Constantine to Today,” in Christianity: The Basics (Bloomsbury Religion in North America series), edited by Dyron B. Daughrity (London: Bloomsbury, 2021).
  • “Stones of Memory: Joshua 4:7, 21-24,” Faith and History: A Devotional, edited by Chris Gehrz and Beth Allison Barr (Waco, TX: 1845 Books/Baylor University Press, 2020), 27-30.
  • “Civil Religion, War, and American Pentecostals,” in Civil Religion and American Christianity, edited by Liam Atchison, Keith Bates, and Darin D. Lenz (2018; Revised Edition, Middletown, R.I.: Stone Tower Press, 2020), 173-205.
  • “‘Loyalty to our Heavenly Country’: British Christianity and the First World War,” in Remembering Armageddon: Religion and the First World War, edited by Philip Jenkins (Waco, TX: ISR Books/Baylor University, 2015), 25-42.
  • “‘A Peculiar Charm’: The Story of George Müller of Bristol in Mid-Nineteenth Century America,” in Culture, Spirituality, and the Brethren, edited by Neil T. R. Dickson and Thomas J. Marinello (Troon, Scotland: Brethren Archivists and Historians Network, 2014), 277-290.

Articles

  • “Immersed in Dependency: American Missionaries, Empires, and India in the 1830s,” Journal of Early Modern History (forthcoming).
  • “‘Withdraw from Babylon and worldly Egypt’: America’s Cultural War, Michael Sattler, and the Radical Otherness of Christian Identity,” Pacific Journal 15 (2020): 99-126.
  • "‘Don’t you dare spend a million on the mission field’: Mark Buntain and the Spirit of Pragmatism in Pentecostal Medical Missions in Kolkata, India,” Journal of Social History of Medicine and Health (December 2019): 119-133.
  • “‘Hail Luther’s Contribution’: A Sixteenth-Century Reformer in Cold War America,” Church History and Religious Culture (formerly: Nederlands Archief Voor Kerkgeschiedenis) 98, no. 3-4 (December 2018): 448-476.
  • “‘St. Mark of Calcutta,’ Spiritual Geography, and Pentecostal Medical Missions in Twentieth-Century India,” Indian Church History Review 52, no. 2 (July 2018): 11-31.
  • “Faith in the Hearing: Gospel Recordings and the World Mission of Joy Ridderhof (1903-1984),” Studies in Church History 53 (2017): 420-434.
  • “‘Citizens of the World’: Nationalism, Ecumenical Missions, and the Idea of World Unity before the First World War,” Social Sciences and Missions 28, no. 1-2 (Spring 2015): 32-56.
  • “‘Visions on the Battlefields’: Alexander A. Boddy, Early British Pentecostalism, and the First World War, 1914-1918,” The Journal of Religious History 32, no. 3 (September 2008): 281-302.

Courses

  • World Civilizations I
  • World Civilizations II
  • U.S. History since 1865
  • The Church in the American Experience
  • History of Christianity
  • Renaissance and Reformation
  • Early Modern Europe
  • Twentieth-Century Europe
  • Nazi Germany and the Holocaust
  • War and Civilization
  • Research Methods in History
  • Research Seminar

Books

Civil Religion and American ChristianityCivil Religion and American Christianity

Areas of Expertise for Media Interviews

  • History of Christianity
  • Pietism
  • Evangelicalism
  • George Müller of Bristol
  • Christian missions
  • War and religion
  • War and memory
  • Civil religion
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