John G. Turner—Historian of American religion

Hello. I write, teach, and speak about the place of religion in American history. I am a professor of Religious Studies and History at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. You can find out a bit more about my academic and spiritual biography here.

Books. I’ve written a few books. Here are the covers along with some nice things other people have said about them:

Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet

A dynamic biography of Mormonism’s charismatic and controversial founder.

“Joseph Smith jumps off the pages as an audacious, visionary, and often reckless character. Turner has expertly portrayed Smith as an endlessly complex figure who can no more be tamed in death than he could in life.”—Patrick Q. Mason

I've done a series of interviews about Joseph Smith with Mormon Stories. Here's the first. KUER's RadioWest—with host Doug Fabrizio—produced a two-part interview. Listen to Part I and Part II. Peggy Fletcher Stack and Dave Noyce interviewed me for the Salt Lake Tribune's Mormon Land podcast. My launch event was at Salt Lake City's Benchmark Books.

They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty

A history of the Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony, timed for the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower crossing.

“Turner takes readers deep into the complex world the Pilgrims inhabited, giving an old familiar story remarkable new life and power. The story he tells is at once entertaining, erudite, and wonderfully human.”—Margaret Bendroth

The Mormon Jesus: A Biography

The place of Jesus Christ in Latter-day Saint thought, artwork, and spirituality.

“The Mormon Jesus is ... a lively cultural history of how Mormons have thought of Christ from the Book of Mormon to the Hill Cumorah Pageant. Scriptural translations, visions and revelations, temple ceremonies, songs, Sunday school lessons, paintings, sculpture, and poetry all figure in the story of Mormonism’s distinctive Jesus.”—Richard Lyman Bushman

Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet

A prophet, colonizer, and politician who led his people to the Great Basin.

“Brigham Young is a landmark work… There is no aspect of Young’s fascinating life that eludes Turner’s scrutiny.”—Alex Beam, New York Times Book Review

Cover of Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ

Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America

The history of one of the world's largest and most influential evangelical organizations.

"[An] intelligently contextualized biography ... Turner has done a wonderful job of bringing Bill Bright out of the shadow of Billy Graham and thereby greatly enhancing our understanding of the new evangelicalism."—Journal of American History

Thumbnail Art for Antisemitism, U.S.A. podcast

Antisemitism, U.S.A.: A History Podcast

I worked with Lincoln Mullen, Jeanette Patrick, Jim Ambuske, Britt Tevis, and Mark Oppenheimer on Antisemitism, U.S.A., a podcast about the history of antisemitism in the United States. It is a production of R2 Studios at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media.

Schedule from the 1926 U.S. Census of Religious Bodies

American Religious Ecologies

The American Religious Ecologies project at the Center for History and New Media is creating new datasets from historical sources and new ways of visualizing them so that we can better understand the history of American religion. We are currently digitizing the 1926 Census of Religious Bodies. At the start of the twentieth century, the U.S. Census Bureau surveyed the nation’s “religious bodies.” These congregation-level schedules—some 232,154 of them—are a treasure trove of congregation- and place-specific data.

Speaking. I love speaking before all sorts of audiences. Students. Book groups. Mayflower societies. Congregations. Faithful. Skeptics.