News & Events

UNC Asheville to Host Talk on "Religious Appalachia"

March 17, 2010

UNC Asheville's Religious Studies Department will host a talk on "Religious Appalachia: Mass Culture, Lost Mountains and Vanishing Traditions" by Wake Forest University professor Bill J. Leonard at 7 p.m. Monday, March 29, at UNC Asheville's Reuter Center. The talk is the second annual Sam Hill Lecture in Southern Religious History. The event is free and open to the public.

Leonard is founding dean and professor at Wake Forest University's Divinity School. Previously he taught at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky and Samford University in Alabama. Leonard has also served as a visiting professor at Yale University and Seinan Gakuin University in Japan. An ordained Baptist minister, Leonard has been a pastor of more than 25 churches from Massachusetts to North Carolina.

Leonard, who holds a doctorate from Boston University, is the author of some 15 books, including "Appalachian Christianity" and "The Fragmentation of the Southern Baptist Convention." His most recent books are "Baptist Questions, Baptist Answers" and "The Baptist Bible," both published in 2009. Leonard is also the author of more than 400 articles published in a variety of journals, periodicals and books.

UNC Asheville's Sam Hill Lecture in Southern Religious History honors the founding father of Southern religions history. A distinguished scholar and long-time professor at the University of Florida, Hill is now retired and lives in Black Mountain, N.C.

The talk is sponsored by UNC Asheville's Religious Studies Department, History Department and Office of the Dean of Humanities.

For more information, call the Religious Studies Department at 828/250-2397.