About
James Whittaker became AB's Provost in July 2024, having served on the Philippi campus since 2019 — first as the inaugural Dean of the (then-new) College of Humanities and Religion, then briefly as Interim Provost during the 2023–24 transition year. He came to AB from Eastern University, where he taught for thirteen years and chaired the Department of Theology and Religious Studies.
Whittaker holds a Ph.D. in the History of Religion from Yale University (Yale Divinity School), where he wrote a dissertation on the print-culture networks of mid-Atlantic Baptist congregations in the long eighteenth century. He has since published three books on the subject and is widely regarded as one of the country's leading historians of American Baptist intellectual life.
As Provost, Whittaker oversees AB's academic affairs across all four colleges, the Pickett Library, the Registrar, the Office of Institutional Effectiveness, and the Faculty Senate. He chairs the Tenure and Promotion Committee and is the senior academic officer for accreditation. His office maintains an open-door schedule for faculty and students on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Education
- 2006Ph.D., History of Religion — Yale University (Yale Divinity School). Dissertation: Ink and Inheritance: Baptist Print Culture in the Mid-Atlantic, 1689–1763.
- 2001M.Div. (with distinction) — Princeton Theological Seminary.
- 1998B.A., History (Phi Beta Kappa) — Wheaton College (IL). Senior honors thesis: "Roger Williams and the Theology of Soul Liberty."
Teaching
Provost Whittaker continues to teach one upper-level seminar each academic year, alternating between AB's Theology and History departments. He is a believer that academic administrators must remain teachers — "not in the abstract, but on the actual ground of an actual syllabus."
- HIS 320American Religious HistoryA reading-intensive upper-level survey from the Pilgrim landing through the present. Particular attention to Baptist movements, Black church traditions, and Appalachian religion.
- THE 410The Baptist Movement: Origins to PresentCapstone seminar on the global Baptist movement from John Smyth (1609) to the modern American Baptist Convention. Includes a research-paper requirement using AB's Storer Reading Room archive.
Research & Scholarship
Whittaker's research traces the under-documented intellectual networks of mid-Atlantic Baptist communities from the colonial period through the early national era. His current book project — under contract with Oxford University Press, expected 2027 — extends that work into the antebellum period and examines the role of Baptist women in print culture, preaching circuits, and the abolitionist movement.
He has been an NEH Long-Term Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society, a Mellon Visiting Scholar at the Pennsylvania Historical Society, and a research affiliate at the Center for Baptist Studies at Mercer University. At AB he founded the Storer Reading Room initiative — a partnership between the Pickett Library, the Office of the Provost, and the AB Theology department to recover and digitize archival materials related to the Storer College legacy.
Selected Publications & Presentations
- 2023The Inkwell and the Pulpit: Print and Piety in the American Baptist Movement. Oxford University Press.
- 2018Soul Liberty: Roger Williams and the Theology of Religious Freedom. Eerdmans.
- 2012Ink and Inheritance: Baptist Print Culture in the Mid-Atlantic, 1689–1763. Penn State University Press.
- 2025"The Niagara Movement and Baptist Higher Education." Church History, March.
- 2024"Storer College and the Memory of Soul Liberty." The Journal of African American History.
- 2022Keynote, Conference on Faith and History, "Reading Backwards: How We Tell the Story of American Religion."
Honors & Service
- 2024Appointed Provost, Alderson Broaddus University.
- 2021NEH Long-Term Fellow, American Antiquarian Society.
- 2018Distinguished Book Award, Conference on Faith and History (for Soul Liberty).
- 2014Mellon Foundation Visiting Scholar, Pennsylvania Historical Society.
- 2008Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow.
The job of the provost is not to run the academic enterprise like a business. It is to protect the conditions under which a teacher can still surprise a student — and a student can still surprise a teacher.— Dr. James K. Whittaker
Beyond the Classroom
Provost Whittaker is a serious amateur woodworker (his home study is full of hand-built bookcases), a fly-fisherman of patient repute, and a lay reader at Christ Episcopal Church in Clarksburg, where his wife Sarah is the rector. They have three children, the oldest of whom is a freshman at AB.
He is a long-time Penn State football fan, has run twelve marathons (slowly, by his account), and is the unofficial AB Faculty Trivia Champion for three consecutive years running.