About

David F. Holland serves as the John A. Bartlett Professor of New England Church History at Harvard Divinity School and, as of July 2024, is the associate dean for faculty and academic affairs. His research focuses on the intersecting theological commitments and cultural changes that shaped American life from the early seventeenth century to the late nineteenth. His first book, Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America, was published by Oxford University Press in 2011. He has also published a brief theological introduction to the Book of Mormon and is an associate editor of the Oxford Handbook on Seventh-day Adventism, published in 2024. His scholarly work has appeared in the New England Quarterly, Law and History Review, and other collections, including a recent essay in Secularization and Religious Innovation in the Atlantic World by Oxford University Press. Holland is currently working on a comparative biography titled A Particular Universe: Ellen Gould White, Mary Baker Eddy and the Nineteenth-Century United States.

Research topics

• Literature
• Epistemology
• Art
• History
• Philosophy

Selected publications

• The Phenomenon of Continuing Revelation in the Nineteenth Century

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • History
  • Art
  • Philosophy

  Abstract Numerous cultural forces converged in the nineteenth-century United States to intensify long-standing debates about the nature of divine revelation. Deists, Millerites, biblical critics, evangelical biblicists, charismatic Christians, Latter-day Saints, Shakers, and others confronted their contemporaries with urgent questions concerning how and when God speaks to humanity. The Seventh-day Adventist message, including its declaration that Ellen White revealed divine truth through the gift of prophecy, was both distinctive in its content and unavoidably shaped by this surrounding culture. This chapter recreates that context and identifies its relationship to the distinguishing elements of Adventist rhetoric and doctrine. It concludes with reflections on the Adventist challenge of situating Ellen White in relation to a deep commitment to the singular authority of the biblical canon.

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Linda Reichwein Zientek

  1 shared

• Kim Nimon

  The University of Texas at Tyler

  1 shared

• Robin K. Henson

  University of North Texas

  1 shared

• Mariya Gavrilova Aguilar

  University of North Texas

  1 shared

• Ursula Johnson

  1 shared

• Hector F. Ponce

  1 shared

• Julia A. Fulmore

  University of Dallas

  1 shared

• Amanda Kraha

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Gomes Honors

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• JoAnn E Mansonh-359
• Randy L. Bucknerh-268
• Edward Giovannuccih-267
• Kristen Andersonh-263