Baptists in American Life
JD Greear (Summit Church)
J.D. Greear is the pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Under Greear’s leadership, Summit has grown from a plateaued church of 300 to one of over 13,000. He has led Summit in a bold vision to plant one thousand new churches by the year 2050. So far, Summit has planted over 700 churches. Greear earned his BA at Campbell University and his MDiv and PhD from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Greear was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in 2018 and re-elected in 2019. He served a third year when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of the 2020 annual meeting of the SBC. Greear has authored several books, including Everyday Revolutionary (2025); 12 Truths & a Lie (2023); Essential Christianity (2023); Just Ask (2021); What Are You Going to Do with Your Life? (2020); Searching for Christmas (2020); Above All (2019); Not God Enough (2018); Gaining by Losing (2015); Jesus, Continued… (2014); Stop Asking Jesus into Your Heart (2013); and Gospel (2011). He hosts Summit Life, a 30-minute daily radio broadcast, and the Ask the Pastor podcast.
Molly Worthen (UNC Chapel Hill)
Molly Worthen is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a freelance journalist. She received her BA and PhD from Yale University. Her research focuses on North American religious and intellectual history. Her most recent book, Spellbound (2025), is a history of charisma as both a religious and a political concept from the Puritans to the Trump era. Apostles of Reason (2013) examines American evangelical intellectual life since 1945, especially the internal conflicts among different evangelical subcultures. Her first book, The Man On Whom Nothing Was Lost (2006), is a behind-the-scenes study of American diplomacy and higher education told through the lens of biography. She created an audio and video course for The Great Courses, “History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch,” as well as a course for Audible, Charismatic Leaders Who Remade America. Worthen writes about religion, politics, and higher education for The New York Times and has also contributed to The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Slate, and other publications.