Abram Van Engen named next Director of Danforth Center on Religion and Politics

The John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis is pleased to share the news that Abram Van Engen has been appointed the next director of the Center effective July 1, 2025. He will also hold the title of Professor of Religion and Politics with this appointment.

Van Engen is the Stanley Elkin Professor in the Humanities and current chair of the Department of English at Washington University in St. Louis.

Washington University Provost Beverly Wendland announced the appointment in early January: “I am confident he will be an excellent and thoughtful leader and am looking forward to working more closely with him in this new role as we approach an exciting period of transition and growth at the Center.”

Van Engen will assume full directorship of the Center beginning with the 2026-2027 academic year. During the 2025-2026 year, he will lead alongside Vice Director Mark Valeri, the Reverend Priscilla Wood Neaves Distinguished Professor of Religion and Politics and current Center faculty member.  The first year of shared leadership will reinforce an effective and collegial transition.

“I’m very excited to build on the excellent work of the Center,” Van Engen says. “The John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics promotes public dialogue and deepens understanding of important issues. I’m looking forward to building connections across campus, collaborating with other national centers, and fostering new projects that extend the Center’s reach and influence.”

Mark Valeri shares, “I am delighted with the news that Abram will become our Center’s new director. He will add to the Center a wonderful array of scholarly talents, literary sensibilities, and energetic leadership. We all look forward to moving ahead with Abram at the helm.”

Van Engen has published widely on religion and literature, focusing especially on seventeenth-century Puritans and the way they have been remembered and remade in American culture. His first book, Sympathetic Puritans: Calvinist Fellow Feeling in Early New England (Oxford University Press, 2015), studied the role of sympathy in seventeenth-century Puritanism, drawing together abiding interests in the history of emotions, theology, imagined communities, and literary form. In his second book, City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism (Yale University Press, 2020),Van Engen moved from a study of the Puritans in their own time and place to an interest in the ways they have been recollected and re-used by later generations. City on a Hill engages with religion and politics from the 1600s to the present day. Van Engen has also authored numerous articles and publications on these topics.

Work on his second project was furthered by participation in the Humanities Digital Workshop at Washington University in St. Louis, where Van Engen led a team to study the concept and creation of American exceptionalism through a history of the phrase “city on a hill.” An additional digital project mapped canonicity and representation in anthologies of early American literature. Collaboration remains essential to his work, with co-edited journal issues, co-written articles, co-taught courses and working groups that bring together literature, history, religion, politics, and psychology.

His third book Word Made Fresh: An Invitation to Poetry for the Church (Eerdmans Publishing, 2024) won Christianity Today’s 2024 Best Book Award in Culture, Poetry, and the Arts. He’s also known for co-hosting the podcast “Poetry for All,” which introduces great poems to a broad audience. He is currently working on his fourth book, a literary biography of the Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet, while finishing a third co-edited volume, Anne Bradstreet Today, which collects fresh work from leading modern poets all responding to this early American woman’s life and literature.

Abram Van Engen earned his PhD and master’s degrees from Northwestern University and an undergraduate degree from Calvin College.

The John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics was established in 2010 at Washington University in St. Louis. The Center serves as an open venue for fostering rigorous scholarship and informing broad academic and public communities about the intersections of religion and U.S. politics. The Center offers undergraduate courses and a minor in religion and politics, as well as a vibrant public event program and an online journal ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera.

For more information about the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, visit the website at http://rap.wustl.edu or contact Debra Kennard at 314-935-7790.