Universalism: The Christian Debate on Universal Salvation / Michael McClymond, Ph.D.

Faith Ascent is a denominationally diverse para-church ministry based in St. Louis, MO. Our Mission: Reduce the number of young Christians abandoning their beliefs in college and disengaging from the Church. Our Vision: We envision a world where every college bound Christian leaves home equipped with “good reasons” for the hope they have in Jesus and connects with Christian community on campus. For more information visit www.faithascent.com
Michael J. McClymond, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in Theological Studies at Saint Louis University and previously completed a term as the Clarence Louis and Helen Irene Steber Professor. He was educated at Northwestern University (B. A. in Chemistry), Yale University (M.Div.), and the University of Chicago (M.A. in Religion, Ph.D. in Theology). In addition to his work at Saint Louis University, he held teaching or research appointments at Wheaton College - Illinois (1988-89), Westmont College (1989-96), University of California - San Diego (1996-98), and Emory University (2001- 02). Following college, he worked for Hercules, Inc. Research in Delaware as a research chemist and an understudy to Dr. David Breslow, who was part of the 1940s Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb.
McClymond’s book, Encounters With God: An Approach to the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Oxford University Press, 1998), received the 1999 Brewer Prize from the American Society of Church History as the best first book in the history of Christianity. He was co-editor of (with David Noel Freedman of University of California, San Diego) and a contributor to The Rivers of Paradise: Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad as Religious Founders (Eerdmans, 2001), editor of Embodying the Spirit: New Perspectives on North American Revivalism (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), and author of Familiar Stranger: An Introduction to Jesus of Nazareth (Eerdmans, 2004; winner of the Award of Merit in 2005 from Christianity Today magazine). He is the sole editor of a two-volume reference work that incorporates the contributions of 120 scholars, Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America (Greenwood Press, 2007).
McClymond has several projects currently in progress. With Lamin Sanneh of Yale University, he is co-editing the Blackwell Companion to World Christianity (Basil Blackwell, 2012). With Gerald McDermott of Roanoke College, he is co-author of The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Oxford University Press, in press, anticipated 2011). Comprising forty-five chapters, this work will be the most in-depth study ever published on its topic. It draws on the full range of texts included in the 73-volume, online Yale University Press version of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (edwards.yale.edu) and interacts with hundreds of books, dissertations, and articles on Edwards’s theology.
During 2009-10, McClymond was co-recipient (with Candy Brown of Indiana University) of a grant from the Flame of Love project to do on-site observation of divine healing practices in emerging Pentecostal churches in Mozambique, Brazil, and North America. Currently he is finishing some articles related to that grant. In 2003 McClymond was featured in an hour-long National Public Radio program on Pentecostalism. In the last five years he has served as the dissertation adviser for a total of nine Ph.D. students who are investigating diverse aspects of Christian theology and history, including developments in Lutheran, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, and Orthodox Christianity.
Dr. McClymond has been a speaker in Protestant and Roman Catholic parishes and conferences. Since 2005, he has been Program Coordinator for Global Day of Prayer -St. Louis, which attracted an interracial and interdenominational gathering of some 3000 Christians to Busch Stadium. He is founder and president of the Institute for World Christianity (www.worldchristianity.org), a nonprofit organization (501c3) that brings together emerging Christian leaders from around the world to explore new forms of collaboration with one another. He also has served on the board of Stepping into the Light, a drug-and-alcohol addiction recovery ministry in the city of St. Louis and on the board for Habitat for Humanity-St. Louis. He is a guitarist, singer, and songwriter in The Pneumatics-a blues-and-rock trio that has opened for Chuck Berry. He is the single father of a college-aged daughter, Sarah, who lives in Atlanta.