Ralph C. Wood

Contact Information:
Department of Religion
Baylor University
One Bear Place #97284
Waco, TX 76798-7284

Office:Tidwell 601

Phone: (254) 710-6986
FAX: (254) 710-3740

Email:
Ralph_Wood@baylor.edu

Personal Website

University Professor of Theology and Literature

Education:

• B. A., Texas A&M University-Commerce (formerly East Texas State College), 1963 (with academic distinction)
• M. A., Texas A&M University-Commerce, 1965. Thesis: "The Scandal of Redemption: Religious Meaning in the Novels of Flannery O'Connor" (Paul W. Barrus, director)
• A. M., University of Chicago, 1968
• Ph. D., University of Chicago, 1975. Dissertation: "Joyce Cary's Vitalism: A Theological Critique of the First Trilogy" (Nathan A. Scott, Jr., director; Martin E. Marty and Wayne C. Booth, readers)

Biography:

Ralph C. Wood, University Professor of Theology and Literature at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from Texas A&M University-Commerce, as well as M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago. From 1971-97 he taught on the faculty of Wake Forest University, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he was the John Allen Easley Professor of Religion from 1990. At Baylor, he teaches in both the Great Texts program and the Department of Religion. He serves as an editor-at-large for the Christian Century and as a member of the editorial boards of the Flannery O'Connor Review as well as VII: An Anglo-American Literary Review (devoted to the work of George MacDonald, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers and Owen Barfield. His first book, published in 1988 by the University of Notre Dame Press, is entitled The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists (Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, John Updike, and Peter De Vries). He is also the author of Contending for the Faith: The Church's Engagement with Culture (Baylor, 2003); The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth (Westminster John Knox, 2004); Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South (Eerdmans, 2004); Literature and Theology (Abingdon, 2008); Preaching and Professing: Sermons by a Teacher Seeking to Proclaim the Gospel (Eerdmans, 2009).

Academic Interests and Research:

"I seek to interpret several of the major literary texts of the West, especially from the 19th and 20th centuries, from a confessionally Christian angle of vision. My aim is to show the relevance of these books to the witness of the Church as well as to the life of secular culture."

Professional Awards and Activities: Reid-Doyle Junior Faculty Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Wake Forest University, 1979.

R. J. Reynolds Research Leaves, Wake Forest University, for study at the Istituto Lorenzo de' Medici, Florence, Italy, (1977); and at King's College, University of London (1988).

Chairman of the Arts, Literature and Religion section of the Southeast American Academy of Religion, 1978 80.

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers, 1982 83 ($25,000). Topic: "The Comedy of Redemption: Literary Vision and Theological Doctrine in Six Modern Writers."

Chief author of a successful proposal to the Henry Luce Foundation for a three year, $75,000 program entitled "Religion and the Social Crisis," 1981 84.

Editorial Advisory Board, The Flannery O'Connor Review, 1982-present.

Editor, Dissertation Series, National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, 1984 1987.

Vice President, Southeastern Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, 1985 86. President, 1986-87.

Book Review Editor, Perspectives in Religious Studies, 1988-2003.

Editor-at-Large, The Christian Century, 1988-present.

Manuscript Reviewer, Christianity and Literature, 1989-present.

Manuscript Referee for Princeton, Pennsylvania State, Illinois, Missouri, Notre Dame, Yale and Oxford university presses as well as for Eerdmans, Abingdon, and Rowman & Littlefield commercial publishers.

Jon Reinhardt Award for Distinguished Teaching among Senior Faculty, Wake Forest University, 1991.

National Peer Reviewer for the Religion Department, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama, 1993.

Advisory Board of the Rose Hill House of Studies, Aiken, South Carolina, 1994-97.

One of 12 scholars invited to join the American Literature and Religion Project sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Erasmus Institute of Notre Dame, 2001-2005.

Distinguished Alumnus of Texas A & M University-Commerce, October 2002.

Second Place, 2005 Catholic Press Association Award for Biography (Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South [Eerdmans, 2004).

Board of Directors of the Flannery O'Connor–Andalusia Foundation, 2006-present.

Board of Advisors of the Humanitas Forum on Christianity and Culture, 2007-present.

Mary Ann Remick Senior Visiting Fellowship ($40,000) at the University of Notre Dame, 2007-2008.

Editorial Board for VII: An Anglo-American Literary Review (devoted to the work of George MacDonald, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers and Owen Barfield.

Selected Research Articles:

"Rapidly Rises the Morning Tide: An Essay on P. D. James' The Children of Men," Theology Today, 51, 2 (July 1994): 277-88.

"Dostoevsky on Evil as a Perversion of Personhood: A Reading of Ivan Karamazov and the Grand Inquisitor," Perspectives in Religious Studies 26, 3 (Fall 1999): 331-48.

"Lest the World's Amnesia Be Complete: A Reading of Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz," Religion and Literature 33, 1 (Spring 2001): 23-41.

"Conflict and Convergence on Fundamental Matters in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien," Renascence LV, 4, Summer 2003): 315-338.

"How the Church Became Invisible: A Christian Reading of American Literary Tradition," (with Stanley Hauerwas) Religion and Literature 38, 1 (Spring 2006): 61-93.

"Sacramental Suffering: The Friendship of Flannery O'Connor and Elizabeth Hester," Modern Theology 24:3 (July 2008): 387-411.

Books:

The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists (Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, John Updike and Peter De Vries). Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. Available in paperback from 1993-2009.

Contending for the Faith: Essays in the Church's Engagement with Culture. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2003.

The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003.

Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004). Issued in paperback 2005.

Literature and Theology [Horizons in Theology Series] (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2008).

Preaching and Professing: Sermons by a Teacher Seeking to Profess the Gospel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009).

Courses Taught at BaylorL

• REL 3370 Religion and Literature
• REL 4388 Christian Literary Classics
• REL 5151 Theology Colloquium
• REL 5354 Neo-Liberal Theology and Its Alternatives
• REL 5357 The 20th Century Catholic Renascence
• Great Texts 3331
• ENG 3372
• ENG 5376
• ENG 5377