Ralph C. Wood
University Professor of Theology and Literature
Baylor University
Ralph C. Wood, professor of theology and literature at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from Texas A&M University at Commerce, as well as M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago. From 1971 to1997 he taught at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he held the John Allen Easley Professorship in Religion. During the 1997-98 academic year, he was Distinguished Professor of Religion at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. At Baylor he teaches in the departments of English and Religion, as well as the Truett Theological Seminary. His major book, first published in 1988 and still in print from the University of Notre Dame Press, is entitled The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists (Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, John Updike, and Peter De Vries). He also serves as an editor-at-large for the Christian Century, and on the editorial board of the Flannery O'Connor Review. His most recent books are Contending for the Faith: The Church's Engagement with Culture (Baylor University, 2003), The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth (Westminster John Knox, 2003) and Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South (Eerdmans, 2004). His book on Tolkien has sold more than 25,000 copies, and he has been invited to give dozens of lectures on Tolkien and O'Connor at major universities and churches across the U. S. and Canada.
