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Martin Dotterweich

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Martin Dotterweich
Professor of History & Director, King Institute for Faith & Culture
423.652.4835
Biography

I grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, not so far from King, and my student days took me to Chicago, Boston, and Scotland. I studied literature and philosophy at Wheaton College, then received the MDiv from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and finally the PhD from the University of Edinburgh. After six years in Scotland, I returned to teach for five years in Memphis, and came to King in 2004. I live here with my wife Heather and our children Kathleen and Peter.

I direct the King (formerly Buechner) Institute for Faith and Culture (link to the page), which is dedicated to exploring how faith engages culture, for both King faculty and students and the broader community. We host an annual speaker series which brings artists and authors, engineers and entrepreneurs, poets and priests, and many others to cultivate a conversation that is both artful and substantial on things that matter. We seek to create a space for people to meet and converse in an atmosphere of gracious openness, full of hope, expecting serendipity.

My teaching ranges widely, but I am most at home when I’m talking about the history of Christianity (especially Medieval and Reformation), or the history of books, or the history of Scotland. Irrespective of subject matter, though, I aspire to offer my students (and myself) the chance to engage the inescapable questions of life along with persons from the past. Here we discover the brilliance of our forbears, and their flaws, and our own part in an ongoing, shared quest. Here faith and history meet, and the results can change us — usually by complicating our questions.

Beyond my scholarly work, I am interested in writers of the early twentieth century who found in the past a vital and direct answer to the agonizing questions of their own day: G.K. Chesterton, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, and especially Charles Williams.

Education
  • PhD University of Edinburgh (supervisors David F. Wright and Jane E.A. Dawson)
  • MDiv Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
  • BA Wheaton College (IL)

Seminars

  • 2013 National Endowment for the Humanities, “Researching Early Modern Manuscripts and Printed Books” (four weeks, New York City)
  • 2012 Folger Shakespeare Library, “Teaching Book History” (three days, Washington, DC)
Recent Publications and Presentations

Articles

  1. “A book for Lollards and Protestants: Murdoch Nisbet’s New Testament,” in Crawford Gribben and David G. Mullan (eds), Literature and the Scottish Reformation (Ashgate, May 2009), pp. 233-246
  2. “Sacraments and the Church in the Scottish evangelical mind, 1528-1555,” Records of the Scottish Church History Society 36 (2006), pp. 41-71
  3. “Conciliar Authority in Reformation Scotland: The Example of the Kennedy/Davidson Debate, 1558-63,” in The Church Retrospective, ed R.N. Swanson, Studies in Church History vol. 33 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1997), pp. 289-306

  4. “Weaving Others into the Tapestry of Memory,” in Erin VanLaningham (ed.), Called Beyond Ourselves: Vocation and the Common Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2024)

  5. “Habit and Belief in the Scottish Reformation,” in Mark Elliott and David Fergusson (eds), The Oxford History of Scottish Theology, volume 1: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 173-188

Reference

  1. Entries for Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004):
    1. Balnaves, Henry
    2. Borthwick, John
    3. Buckenham, Robert
    4. Lekpreuik, Robert
    5. Nisbet, Murdoch
    6. Wishart, George
  2. Entries for Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals, ed Timothy Larsen (Downer’s Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 2003):
    1. Knox, John
    2. Melville, Andrew

Other publications

  1. George Wishart Quincentennial Conference Proceedings, ed Martin Holt Dotterweich (London: Scott Wishart, 2014), introduction and chapter “George Wishart in England”
  2. “A Mentor to Knox,” Life and Work: The Magazine of the Church of Scotland (August, 2013), pp. 38-39
  3. Foreword to a reprint of D.P. Thompson, George Wishart: The Man who Roused Scotland (St Andrews, 2013)

  4. “Remembering Frederick Buechner 1926-2022,” for Vocation Matters (the blog of NetVUE), 29 August 2022

  5. “Alice Caldwell ’51: 8/11/29-7/13/2020,” King: A Magazine for Alumni & Friends of King University, Fall 2020, p. 27

  6. “Arts are Invaluable to Children and Families,” A! Magazine for the Arts, vol. 27 no. 3 (March, 2020), p. 5

  7. “Remembering Tom Peake,” in Bettie Whitlow Hite, King University: Our Sesquicentennial Story: 150 Years of Faith, Learning, and Life, (Bristol: King University, 2018), p. 103

  8. “Neal Caldwell 1932-2018,” King Magazine, Fall 2018, pp. 35-36

  9. “In Memoriam: Dale Brown,” A! Magazine for the Arts, November 2014, p. 23

Lectures

  1. 2014 “Prophecy, Preaching, and Print: The Voices of John Knox,” North American Symposium on John Knox (Montreat, North Carolina)
  2. 2013 “George Wishart in England,” George Wishart Quincentennial Conference (St Andrews, Scotland)
  3. 2012 “The Man in the Leather Mask: Prophecy and Calvinism in Early Modern Scotland,” The University of Evansville Spring History Lecture (Evansville, Indiana)
  4. 2010 “Presbyterian Prophets or Second-sighted Scots? Telling the future in early modern Scotland,” Edinburgh University Ecclesiastical History Graduate Seminar (Edinburgh, Scotland)

  5. 2022     “Remembering the Scottish Reformation,” Distinguished Reformation Lecture, Presbyterian Heritage Center (Montreat, NC)

  6. 2017     “Martin Luther and the 95 Theses: 500 Years of a Theological Legacy,” and “The 95 Theses and the Bible: Sola Scriptura and Protestant Interpretation” (Asbury University)

  7. 2017     “Stirrings and Protests: The Pre-Reformation,” and “Reformation: Conflict and Chaos 1568-1685,” Reformation500 Conference, Presbyterian Heritage Center (Montreat, NC)

Conference papers

  1. 2011 “Setting Light in the Margins: English Bible Annotators Before the King James Version,” The King James Bible and the World It Made 1611-2011 (Baylor University)
  2. 2010 “Presbyterian Prophets and Second-sighted Scots: Theology and the future in early modern Scotland,” Sixteenth Century Studies Conference (Montréal, Québec)
  3. 2006 “‘Alsweall in privy conferance as in doctrin’: How early modern Scottish evangelicals became Protestants,” Scottish Church History Society (Edinburgh, Scotland)
  4. 2004 “Evangelicals and the Church in pre-Reformation Scotland,” Sixteenth Century Studies Conference (Toronto, Ontario)
  5. 2003 “Miles Coverdale and the Publication of English Reform,” Sixteenth Century Studies Conference (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
  6. 2000 “The Analogy of Faith and English Bible Paratexts,” Sixteenth Century Studies Conference (Cleveland, Ohio)
  7. 2000 “The Pastor as Annotator: Miles Coverdale and the English New Testament,” Pacific Tyndale Conference (San Diego, California)
  8. 1999 “Scotorum primus et idem inclytus apostolus: Patrick Hamilton’s Place in the Scottish Reformation,” Society for Reformation Studies (Cambridge, England)
  9. 1998 “Piety, Persecution, and Proselytization: Scottish Protestantism Before the Reformation,” Sixteenth Century Studies Conference (Toronto, Ontario)
  10. 1997 “‘Some spunk of God’s light’: Lollards and Protestants in Scotland,” Scottish Universities Ecclesiastical History Reading Party (Perth, Scotland)
  11. 1996 “George Wishart’s Translation of the First Helvetic Confession,” Reformation Studies Colloquium (St Andrews, Scotland)
  12. 1996 “A ‘gret variance of opinioun’? Scottish Protestants and the Lord’s Supper, 1528-58,” European Reformation Research Group (Stonyhurst, England)
  13. 1995 “The Debate between Quentin Kennedy and John Davidson 1558-63: Understanding the authority of Church councils in the Scottish Reformation,” Ecclesiastical History Society (Norwich, England)

  14. 2017     “Habit and Belief in the Early Scottish Reformation,” Scottish Philosophy and Reformed Theology (Center for the Study of Scottish Philosophy, Princeton Theological Seminary)

  15. 2016     “Religious Identity in Early Modern Scotland: A Reconsideration,” Conference on Faith and History (Regent University)

  16. 2015     “Greatness and Humility: An Imaginative Turn from the Historical Mirror,” Faith and Teaching: Virtue, Practice, and Imagination (Kuyers Institute, Calvin College)

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