PhD Historian of Religion, Science, and Biblical Interpretation

My studies include Semitic languages, Biblical studies, history of science, and history of Christianity, primarily Reformation and modern American. I completed all the coursework for a PhD in Comparative Semitics (effectively Old Testament Languages and Literature+ Arabic) at the University of Chicago, but ultimately received my PhD in American Religious History from Claremont. 

My dissertation explores how the “quintessential American religion” — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, i.e. Mormonism— wrestled with the quintessential American crux of creationism/evolution in the 20th century. Placing that conflict within a broader American cultural context, I locate its roots within the non-exegetical nature of the LDS tradition, unacknowledged hermeneutical assumptions, and a religious devotion to education and science.

With most of my content here, I’m trying to cross boundaries by translating the secular, academic, and technical for a non-specialist and confessional community.

I was the University of Utah’s Tanner Fellow for Mormon Studies (2022-23) and defended my dissertation in Summer 2024.  Its title, “The Scientist is Wrong”: Joseph Fielding Smith, George McCready Price, and the Ascent of Creationist Thought among Latter-day Saints in the Twentieth Century. 

All posts, pages, papers, etc. are copyright to Ben Spackman, 2019, all rights reserved.