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Philip L. Barlow


Philip Layton Barlow (born 1950) is a Harvard-trained scholar who specializes in American Religious History, religious geography, and Mormonism. In 2007 he became the country’s first full-time professor of Mormon studies at a secular university by being appointed as the Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University.

Barlow was raised in Bountiful, Utah. In 1975, he graduated with a B.A. in History from Weber State College. In 1980 and 1988, respectively, he received his Masters in Theological Studies and Doctorate of Theology (Th.D.) from the Harvard Divinity School. While in the Boston area, Barlow taught at the local LDS Institute of Religion. He also served as a counselor in a bishopric to Mitt Romney.

Following the completion of his education, he served in consecutive years as a Mellon Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Rochester. Prior to his arrival at Utah State University, Barlow spent 17 years in the Department of Theological Studies at Hanover College in Indiana.

In 2017 Barlow held the first fellowship at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University.

Barlow's research interests have ranged over American religious and historical geography, concepts of “time” in secular and religious society, the problem of suffering and evil, and Mormon theology and practice. Barlow's first book, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion (Oxford, 1991, 1997) analyzed Latter-day Saint uses of the biblical text, including issues revolving around the LDS Church’s official backing of the King James translation. In 1992, the Mormon History Association awarded the volume its Best First Book Award. His second book, the New Historical Atlas of Religion in America (co-authored with Edwin Scott Gaustad), examined the implications of religion’s connections with “place” and created hundreds of maps portraying the religious composition of the United States over time. The Association of American Publishers named the work the “Best Single-volume Reference Book in the Humanities” for 2001.


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