Diana Butler Bass

Bass’s books range from a study of nineteenth-century evangelicalism (Standing Against the Whirlwind) to a contemporary ethnography of mainline Protestantism (Christianity for the Rest of Us). Throughout her work, she displays an interest in the role of religion in cultural and social change. She eschews programmatic spirituality and leadership in favor of encouraging Christians to seriously practice their faith as a way to reform American churches and political life.

In 2015, she was one of the keynote speakers at the Parliament of the World's Religions, held in Salt Lake City.

For a decade, she worked primarily as a college professor before becoming an independent scholar. During this time she taught at Westmont College, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Macalester College, Rhodes College, and Virginia Theological Seminary. In 2002, the Lilly Endowment awarded Bass a major grant to support her research on mainline Protestant churches.

She married Richard Bass on January 18, 1997, and is the mother of a daughter, Emma. Her sister-in-law, Dorothy C. Bass, is a theologian of Christian practice.

Diana Butler Bass (born 1959) is an American historian of Christianity and an advocate for progressive Christianity. Bass is currently an independent scholar who writes broadly on American religion and culture. She is the author of eight books, three of which have won research or writing awards. She earned a PhD in religious studies from Duke University in 1991 with an emphasis on American ecclesiastical history. While at Duke she studied under George Marsden. From 1995 to 2000, she wrote a weekly column on religion and culture for the New York Times Syndicate that appeared in more than seventy newspapers nationwide and has since become a popular commentator on American religion for other media outlets. Currently, she is a blogger for the God's Politics blog with Jim Wallis at Beliefnet, as well as On Faith and The Huffington Post. She is associated with Sojourners and the Red-Letter Christian movement. She was a keynote speaker at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Salt Lake City in 2015.

Born on February 19, 1959, in Baltimore, Maryland, as Diana Hochstedt, Bass grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona. Raised a United Methodist, she became an evangelical. She attended Westmont College, a Christian college in Santa Barbara, California, and Gordon–Conwell Theological Seminary, where she earned a master's degree in ecclesiastical history. Her spiritual memoir, Strength for the Journey, records her growing dissatisfaction with conservative evangelical religion. She is now a member of the Episcopal Church.