Homecoming: Honored Alumni Lecture
Of History, Human Nature, and Hope
Human beings seem to hunger simultaneously for change and constancy. Americans of the early nineteenth century were particularly attuned to this dilemma and offered a variety of ideas for its resolution. This lecture explores some of their solutions and concludes with a reflection on the distinctive answers offered by the gospel principle of hope.
David F. Holland ('98)
John A. Bartlett Professor of New England Church History, Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs, Harvard Divinity School
David Holland's scholarship and teaching focus on the intersecting theological commitments and cultural changes that shaped American life from the early seventeenth century to the late nineteenth. He earned a degree in history at BYU and graduate degrees in history at Stanford University.
His first book, Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America, was published by Oxford University Press in 2011. He has also published a number of articles and chapters on early American intellectual history, secularism, and new religious movements. His volume in the the Brief Theological Introductions to the Book of Mormon series appeared in 2021 and his editorial project, The Oxford Handbook on Seventh-day Adventism, was published this year.
Holland is currently at work on a co-authored volume, Ideas and Ideals in the American Past, commissioned by Oxford, and a comparative biography, A Particular Universe: Ellen Gould White, Mary Baker Eddy and the Nineteenth Century United States, to be published by Yale University Press.
Holland and his wife, Jeanne, are the parents of four children.
Students in the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences gain Experience Points for attending this lecture. Learn more about Experience Points.