Dr. Douglas Foster
Douglas Foster is Professor Emeritus in the Graduate School of Theology at Abilene (TX) Christian University after serving on the faculty for thirty-one years as Professor of Church History and Director of the Center for Restoration Studies. Previously he served as assistant professor of history at Lipscomb University in Nashville.
He received a PhD in Church History from Vanderbilt University in 1986, and an MA in Theo-logy in 1980 from Scarritt College, both in Nashville.
Foster's scholarly work has centered in three areas: the place of the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement in American and global Christianity; the development of the idea of Christian unity in Christianity; and the history of white supremacy and racial oppression in Christianity.
He served as General Editor and a contributor for the Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (2004), as well as The Stone-Campbell Movement: A Global History (2013). In 2013 he published The Story of Churches of Christ, a brief introduction to the movement, and in 2014 recorded a video series with the same title. In June 2020 Eerdmans published his A Life of Alexander Campbell, the first critical biography of the American religious leader.
Foster wrote wrote a study on “White Supremacy and the Church: How White Christians Created and Perpetuate the Ideology of White Supremacy,” published in Thinking Theologically About Mass Incarceration: Biblical Foundations and Justice Imperatives, Paulist Press, 2017. In 2020 his article “Reclaiming Reconciliation: The Corruption of ‘Racial Reconciliation’ and How It Might be Reclaimed for Racial Justice and Unity” appeared in The Journal of Ecumenical Studies 55 (Winter 2020). Foster also contributed a chapter for the National Council of Churches Faith and Order study of White Supremacy and the Church, titled “The Origins and Anti-Christian Nature of the Great Replacement Theory,” to be published in late 2024.
Married in 1979 to the former Linda Grissom, Doug and Linda have two children, Mary Elizabeth Riedel and Mark; and two grandchildren, Gavin Riedel and Gwyneth Riedel.
Spirituality in the Stone-Campbell Movement: A Preliminary Inquiry
February 20, 2025
7:00 PM
Studies of Stone-Campbell spirituality are virtually absent from the movement's literature, perhaps because its emphasis on rational faith led people to assume that we had no spirituality! This is a profound misunderstanding. Beginning with Sandra Schneiders' definition, "the lived experience of Christian faith," the presentation examines the life and thought of two spiritual leaders in twentieth-century Churches of Christ: Foy E. Wallace, Jr. and Leroy Garrett. After briefly setting the historical and cultural contexts, the study assesses a key text by each to discern theological and hermeneutical commitments and describe their respective spiritualities as paradigmatic of the movement.