Mark Valeri
Interim Director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics
Mark Valeri is the Reverend Priscilla Wood Neaves Distinguished Professor of Religion and Politics in, and Director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, and Professor of History (by courtesy) at Washington University in St. Louis. He previously taught at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, and at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and will be a Beaufort Visiting Fellow at St. John’s College, Cambridge University, Easter term 2027.
A specialist in early American religious history, Professor Valeri’s latest book, The Opening of the Protestant Mind: How Anglo-American Protestants Embraced Religious Liberty (Oxford University Press), won the Philip Schaff Prize from the American Society of Church History in 2025. Among his previous publications are Law and Providence in Joseph Bellamy’s New England (Oxford University Press), which won the Mackemie Prize from the Presbyterian Historical Society, and Heavenly Merchandize: How Religion Shaped Commerce in Puritan America (Princeton University Press), which also won the Philip Schaff Prize from the ASCH. He also has written extensively on the early American theologian Jonathan Edwards. He has been interviewed by the Boston Globe and Forbes Magazine (online), among other media.
A teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church USA, he and his wife Lynn attend Central Presbyterian Church in St. Louis.
Contact Mark Valeri here.