Mark Noll

Mark Noll faculty emeriti photo

Mark Noll, Ph.D.

Professor of History Emeritus

On Faculty since 1976, Retired 2006




Dr. Noll served jointly in Wheaton’s History Department and the department of Biblical and Theological Studies. For Wheaton’s graduate programs, he offered advanced courses in American church history, the Reformation, and recent world Christianity. He graduated from Wheaton College in 1968, the University of Iowa, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and Vanderbilt University.

In 2006, Noll ended twenty-five years of service to Wheaton as McManis Professor of Christian Thought. While at Wheaton, Noll also co-founded (with Nathan Hatch) the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals. In 1994, he co-signed Evangelicals and Catholics Together, an ecumenical document that expressed the need for greater cooperation between Evangelical and Catholic leaders in the United States.

In June 2016, Noll retired after teaching ten years at the University of Notre Dame as the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History. At Notre Dame, he had replaced George Marsden who held this chair before his retirement. Noll is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; in 2006, he received the National Endowment for the Humanities medal at a White House ceremony.

A prolific author, Noll’s publications cover a wide range of topics of interest to evangelicalism. Among his recent books: In the Beginning Was the Word:  The Bible in American Public Life, 1492-1783 (2015); From Every Tribe and Nation: A Historian’s Discovery of the Global Christian Story (2014); Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind (2011); Protestantism--A Very Short Introduction (2011); The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith (2009); God and Race in American Politics: A Short History (2008); The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (2006); America's God, from Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (2002); and as co-editor, Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the Present, (2007).

Today Mark resides in South Bend, Indiana, with his wife Maggie, Wheaton class of 1969.

Vanderbilt University
Ph.D., History of Christianity, 1975

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
M.A., History of Christianity, 1972

University of Iowa
M.A., Comparative Literature, 1970

Wheaton College
B.A., English, 1968