John G. Stackhouse Jr.

John Gordon Stackhouse Jr. (born 1960) is a Canadian scholar of religion. As a journalist he has been recognized with over a dozen awards by the Canadian Church Press, and his scholarship has been supported by research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Association of Theological Schools, the Canadian Embassy to the United States, and several other sponsors. He currently teaches at Crandall University in Moncton, New Brunswick.
Early life.
Stackhouse was born in 1960 in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and raised in southwestern England and northern Ontario, the eldest of four children. His father, John G. Stackhouse, was a general surgeon trained at Queen's University and in Plymouth, Devon, UK, who eventually earned fellowships from the Royal College of Surgeons in Canada, the American College of Surgeons, and the International College of Surgeons. His mother, A. Yvonne (Annan) Stackhouse, was a schoolteacher and later university instructor, with degrees in English literature from Nipissing University and Hardin-Simmons University. She received an honorary doctorate from the latter institution for her work as a teacher, board member, and author of the university's centennial history.
John Jr. received his higher education in Canada and the United States: after a year at Mount Carmel Bible School in Edmonton, he received a BA (First Class Honours, Queen’s University, Kingston) in history, an MA (with Highest Honors, Wheaton College) in church history and theology (with a thesis supervised by Mark A. Noll), and a PhD (University of Chicago) in the history and theology of Christianity (with a dissertation supervised by Martin E. Marty).
Career.
Stackhouse began teaching at the International Teams School of World Missions and then Wheaton College, both in suburban Chicago, during his doctoral studies. His first full-time position was as an assistant professor of European history at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa (1987–90), where he chaired the department in his latter two years and won the college's teaching award. From there, he went to teach Modern Christianity (history, sociology, philosophy, and theology) in the Department of Religion at the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, rising to the rank of Professor in 1997 and receiving the university's top awards for research and for outreach to the community (via his newspaper column and other media appearances). One year later, he left for Regent College in Vancouver (1998–2015), where he served as the Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture at Regent College, in the position formerly held by J. I. Packer.
In 2015, Stackhouse headed east to become the inaugural Samuel J. Mikolaski Professor of Religious Studies at Crandall University and that university's first Dean of Faculty Development, in which latter role he mentors junior faculty and equips mid-career colleagues in teaching and scholarship. In 2018 he received that university's Stephen and Ella Steeves Award for Excellence in Research.
Stackhouse appeared on the editorial masthead of "Christianity Today" from 1994 until 2018, and served as a contributing editor for "Books & Culture" and "Christian History & Biography" magazines. He is a former columnist with "Christian Week" and the "Winnipeg Free Press", and resumed his column with "Faith Today" in 2009. He served as senior advisor to the Centre for Research on Canadian Evangelicalism from its genesis in 2008 to 2010. He wrote over 200 weekly web columns for "Context: Beyond the Headlines," a leading Canadian Christian public affairs television program, until 2020. He now writes occasionally for the Religion News Service, "Sightings" (produced at the University of Chicago Divinity School), and other media. He also serves on the editorial board of the "Anglican Journal" in Canada and as a Fellow of the Centre for Public Christianity in Australia.
Stackhouse's writing has ranged over theology, ethics, the history of Christianity, and both the sociology and philosophy of religion. He has published more than 30 academic journal articles, the same number of full-length chapters in academic books, and more than 900 other articles, columns, book chapters, and reviews. He has edited four books of academic theology, authored eleven books, and co-authored four more. He is listed in "Canadian Who's Who," "The Directory of American Scholars," and "Contemporary Authors." He has given expert testimony to the Canada Revenue Agency, the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, and the British Columbia Supreme Court. He has lectured at dozens of colleges and universities, including Harvard's Kennedy School, Yale Divinity School, Stanford Law School, Fudan University (Shanghai), Hong Kong University, New College, Edinburgh, the University of Otago, and Canadian universities from coast to coast. He has also given over 1000 media interviews, including to CBC TV and radio, CTV, Global TV, and Vision TV in Canada; ABC TV News, NBC TV News, PBS, and Religion News Service in the US; and ABC national TV and radio in Australia—as well as to major periodicals such as "The New York Times", "The Washington Post", "The Globe and Mail", "The National Post", "Time", and "Maclean's".