E. Brooks Holifield is the C. H. Candler Professor of American Church History at Emory University in Atlanta. He received his Ph.D. from the Yale Graduate School in 1970 and joined the faculty of the Candler School of Theology and the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory. He is the author of six books, including 'The Gentlemen Theologians' (1978), 'A History of Pastoral Care in America' (1983), 'Era of Persuasion' (1989), and 'Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War' (2003). He is the past president of the American Society for Church History.