Brent Sockness is an associate professor and the Graduate Director in the Religious Studies Department at Stanford University. He holds an MA in religious studies and PhD in Theology from the University of Chicago, and specializes in modern Western religious thought. His teaching covers a variety of exemplary figures, movements, and topics in the history of European religious thought since the seventeenth century and explores the way in which the Christian religion has undergone modernization via its engagement with the rise of the natural sciences, critical history, and liberal democratic institutions. His current research interests focus on German post-Kantian Protestant theology and ethics in the nineteenth century, especially the work of the philosopher, theologian, and humanist, Friedrich Schleiermacher. Sockness is author of Against False Apologetics: Wilhelm Herrmann and Ernst Troeltsch in Conflict, and numerous articles on Herrmann, Troeltsch, and Schleiermacher. He is co-editor of Schleiermacher, the Study of Religion, and the Future of Theology. Sockness has held fellowships from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He is vice president of the German Schleiermacher-Gesellschaft and served as the interim director of Stanford’s program in Ethics in Society.