Faculty

Ronald F. Thiemann

Bussey Professor of Theology

Ronald F. Thiemann has been at Harvard since 1986 and served as Dean of the Divinity School from 1986 until 1998. He was appointed to the Bussey Professorship, the oldest chair in theology at Harvard, in 2006. He is a Faculty Associate of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and he is a Faculty Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School's Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, where he serves on the steering committee of the center's Joint Program in Religion and Public Life. He is a Faculty Affiliate at the Kennedy School's Harvard Center for Public Leadership and has received a fellowship from the center in support of his current research project. An ordained Lutheran and a specialist on the role of religion in public life, Professor Thiemann is the author of Revelation and Theology: The Gospel as Narrated Promise; Constructing a Public Theology: The Church in a Pluralistic Culture; and Religion in Public Life: A Dilemma for Democracy. He is also an editor of Who Will Provide: The Changing Role of Religion in American Social Welfare. He is currently working on a book-length project entitled Prisoners of Conscience: Public Intellectuals in a Time of Crisis, which examines the courageous stance of four public figures—Anna Akhmatova, Albert Camus, Langston Hughes, and George Orwell—during the tumultuous period of 1914-45. Before coming to Harvard, Thiemann taught for 10 years at Haverford College, where he also served as acting provost and acting president.