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Timothy L. Smith
Timothy Lawrence Smith (1924-1997) was a historian and educator, known as the first American evangelical historian to gain notability in research and higher education.
He was born April 13, 1924 i...view moreTimothy Lawrence Smith (1924-1997) was a historian and educator, known as the first American evangelical historian to gain notability in research and higher education.
He was born April 13, 1924 in Central, South Carolina, the son of Nazarene ministers. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Virginia, where he was a Thomas Jefferson Scholar and Phi Beta Kappa student, and his doctoral degree in history from Harvard University.
Smith began his teaching career at the Eastern Nazarene College (ENC) in 1949 and left in 1954 to take a position at East Texas State University. He went on the teach at the University of Minnesota before becoming director of the American Religious History doctoral program and Chair of the Education Department at the Johns Hopkins University, where he taught for 25 years.
Smith received numerous awards and honors, and served as president of both the American Society of Church History, and the Society of Religious Historians. He was also an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene, and pastored churches in Massachusetts, Maine, and Colorado.
A prolific author who published in nearly every historical journal, Smith’s best-known and most-praised work is his 1957 book Revivalism and Social Reform, formed from his dissertation from Harvard, which received the Brewer prize from the American Society of Church History.
Smith retired to Burke, Virginia, but died at age 72 in West Palm Beach, Florida on January 20, 1997.view less