About
Joseph Williams joined the religion department in 2010 and is assistant professor of American religious history. He teaches courses on the history of religion in the United States, religious healing, modern Christianity, and religion and globalization. Williams’s research interests include pentecostal and charismatic movements, the history of American evangelicalism, and the relationship between religion and modernization. His first book, Spirit Cure: A History of Pentecostal Healing (Oxford, 2013), highlighted the transformation of pentecostal healing since the early 1900s, and the way these changes fueled believers’ transition from a small minority to major players in the marketplace of American religion. His current project, Politics of the Spirit: Pentecostals, Israel, and the Shaping of American Evangelicalism (under contract with Oxford University Press), traces U.S. pentecostals' and charismatics' distinctive contributions to the politicization of American evangelicalism over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, focusing on their evolving relationship with Jews and Israel.
Books
Spirit Cure: A History of Pentecostal Healing, Oxford University Press, January 2013
