John D. Wilsey is a Georgia native whose research specialization is in the History of American Religious Nationalism, and American Conservatism.
Dr. John Wilsey is Professor of Church History and Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Church History and Historical Theology. He also serves as Book Review Editor of The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology.
Prior to coming to Southern, Wilsey taught elementary, middle, and high school students in history and Bible for eleven years in North Carolina and Virginia. He also has served Southern Baptist churches, as an associate pastor in Charlottesville, Virginia for eight years and interim pastor for three years in Spring, Texas. Between 2011 and 2017, he taught history and philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, with most of his teaching load in a fully accredited baccalaureate program in a maximum-security unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Dr. Wilsey’s primary areas of teaching at Southern Seminary and Boyce College are in modern church history, history of Western thought, and American history. He supervises PhD dissertations in the areas of American church history and history of philosophy.
In addition to his work at Southern Seminary and Boyce College, Wilsey has held several fellowships, including with the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville as non-resident fellow (2023-2024); the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty as Affiliate Scholar (2016-2020); the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal as Wilbur Fellow (2023); and the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions in the Politics Department at Princeton University as William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and Public Life (2017-2018). He currently holds fellowships at the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy as Senior Fellow, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention as Research Fellow, and the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary as Research Fellow.
Wilsey’s academic works have been reviewed in outlets such as National Review, Publisher’s Weekly, Journal of Church and State, Fides et Historia, Providence, Church History, Reading Religion, Catholic Books Review, Reviews in American History, Anxious Bench, Claremont Review of Books, First Things, The American Conservative, Christianity Today, and The Federalist. He has appeared on podcasts and programs hosted by the Acton Institute, New Books Network, Current, Thinking in Public, Law and Liberty, the City of Man Podcast, Christ Over All, the Museum of the Bible, the Family Research Council, BBC Radio Wales, 9Marks, the McConnell Center, the Commonwealth Policy Center, and Ben Franklin’s World.
Wilsey has produced peer-reviewed pieces in the journal Religions and in academic books published by Palgrave and Routledge. He has contributed other chapters to books published by Crossway and B&H Academic as well as long-form articles to Modern Age: A Conservative Review and Fides et Historia. He has served as manuscript reviewer for American Political Thought, Religions, InterVarsity Press, and New York University Press and book review editor for H-AmRel of the H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online network.
Wilsey has served on the Ciceronian Society Advisory Board, the Kern Foundation Advisory Council, the Board of Directors of the Society for Values in Higher Education, the Scholar’s Council for the Center for the Electoral College, the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives Advisory Board, and the Annual Meeting Proposal Review Board for Church History as well as the Membership Committee of the Evangelical Theological Society.
In 2020, Wilsey was named Tutor of the Year in Boyce College’s Augustine Honors Collegium. He has addressed students, faculty, and public audiences as an invited lecturer at Princeton University, Princeton Theological Seminary, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Louisville, the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, Waynesburg University, Calvin University, St. Francis University, Hannibal-LaGrange University, Charleston Southern University, Grand Valley State University, the College of Biblical Studies, Houston Baptist University, Northwest Nazarene University, the University of Wyoming, Samford University, Spring Arbor University, Ave Maria University, the Philos Project, the Religious Freedom Institute, the Russell Kirk Center, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and the Kentucky Historical Association.
Over the years, Wilsey has remained active with academic societies, reading papers at meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society, the Conference on Faith and History, the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Christian Scholars’ Conference, the Society for Values in Higher Education, the Society for US Intellectual History, the African American Intellectual History Society, the Ciceronian Society, the Association for the Scientific Study of Religion, and the Center for Christian Study in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society, the Ciceronian Society, the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Philadelphia Society, and the James Madison Society.
Wilsey is a columnist for World Opinions, and his other public writings have appeared in outlets such as Law and Liberty, Current, Modern Reformation, Acton’s Commentary, Christianity Today, Providence, Public Discourse, 9Marks Journal, The Gospel Coalition, Aeon, History News Network, The American Conservative, The Imaginative Conservative, Anxious Bench, Religion and Liberty, and Religion in American History. He has reviewed numerous books for outlets such as Themelios, Southeastern Theological Review, Public Discourse, Fides et Historia, Westminster Theological Journal, Trinity Journal, The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, Journal of Church and State, Evangelical Quarterly, Journal of Markets and Morality, Religion and Liberty, Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care, H-Diplo, Ad Fontes, and The London Lyceum.
Wilsey is married to Mandy, his wife of twenty-seven years, and they have two children. He is an elder at Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky.
books
Religious Freedom: A Conservative Primer (William B. Eerdmans, 2025)
God’s Cold Warrior: The Life and Faith of John Foster Dulles (William B. Eerdmans, 2021)
Democracy in America: A New Abridgment for Students (Lexham, 2016)
American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion: Reassessing the History of an Idea (InterVarsity Press, 2015)
One Nation Under God?: An Evangelical Critique of Christian America (Pickwick, 2011)