Assistant Professor of American Religious History
Director of the E. Morris and Leone Sider Institute for Anabaptist, Pietist, and Wesleyan Studies
Director of Archives
717-766-2511 ext. 5235
PhD, 2020
Temple University
M.A., 2012
Temple University
B.A., 2009
Messiah University
Devin Manzullo-Thomas is assistant professor of American religious history, director of the , and director of archives at Messiah University.
Devin regularly teaches courses in the Biblical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, and Interdisciplinary Studies departments at the university.
In his scholarship, Devin pursues two distinct research agendas. As a denominational historian of the Brethren in Christ Church, he draws on his training in cultural and religious history to understand how this small religious community has changed over time. As a public historian of American religion, he studies the ways in which religious communities—especially Christian communities—construct, commemorate, and contest the past in public through historical societies, heritage sites, museums, monuments, archives, and other institutions of public memory.
Devin is the author of , published in 2022 by the University of Massachusetts Press in their "Public History in Historical Perspective" series. The book is the first history of museums and historic sites operated by evangelical Christians in the United States. In addition, Devin's articles and reviews have appeared in Church History, The Christian Century, Fides et Historia, Brethren in Christ History and Life, Mennonite Quarterly Review, The Wesleyan Theological Journal, Anabaptist Witness, The Conrad Grebel Review, and other scholarly and popular publications.
Participant, “Radical Activists, Faith Communities, Settlement Houses, and More: The Many Roots of Public History and Why They Matter for the Future of the Field.” Roundtable discussion at the Annual Meeting of the National Council on Public History, Hartford, Conn., 28 March 2019.
Devin is currently working on two book projects. The first is Storyteller: The Life and Times of E. Morris Sider, a scholarly biography of E. Morris Sider, the namesake of the Sider Institute and one of the most prolific scholars in the Brethren in Christ Church. The second is Open to the Spirit: The Brethren in Christ Church in the Twentieth Century, a new history of the Brethren in Christ Church in North America between 1900-2000. Both projects are under contract with the Brethren in Christ Historical Society.