CFI Director

Thomas Albert (Tal) Howard,
Professor of History and Director of the Center for Faith and Inquiry

Professor Howard holds a Ph.D. in European intellectual history from the University of Virginia. Professor Howard has also studied and/or taught at Valparaiso University, the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, the Humboldt University of Berlin, the University of Basel, and the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Religion and the Rise of Historicism (Cambridge, 2000) and Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University (Oxford, 2006), and editor of The Future of Christian Learning: An Evangelical and Catholic Dialogue by Mark Noll and James Turner (Brazos Press, 2008). His most recent book, God and the Atlantic: America, Europe and the Religious Divide (Oxford, 2011). 

Professor Howard lives in Georgetown, Massachusetts with his wife, Agnes, who also teaches at Gordon College, and their children, Elizabeth, Hannah and Benjamin.