About

Hello and welcome. I am an assistant professor in the Department for the Study of Religions at Wake Forest University, where I teach courses in religion, politics, and the history of Christianity. I work primarily in the areas of religious ethics, political theology, and ethnographic theology, and I use ethnographic method in my research to raise questions about religion, politics, and everyday life in the US American context. My current book project—tentatively titled The Gun in US American Christian Life: An Ethnographic Ethics—explores the relationship of guns to American Christianity and is based on fieldwork I carried out with Christian handgun owners and Christian anti-gun violence activists in North Carolina. I hold an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D. in Religion from Duke University. 

Alongside my academic work, I am also a practicing musician. I grew up playing the piano, had a stint with the uilleann pipes, and settled on the dobro, lap steel guitar, and pedal steel guitar. I’ve released several instrumental albums on Other Songs, and more recently, two albums on ambient/minimalist label 12k, Mount Carmel and Slow Machines (with Stephen Vitiello). My music has been described as “cinematic pastoral” (Stationary Travels), “meditative, evolving, expectant; a kind of slow Americana” (Le Devoir), and capable of “holding you at a deliberative, transformational distance” (Indy Week). NPR Music included Slow Machines among its top ten albums of February 2020.