William Skiles, Ph.D., M.Div.

Bio

Dr. William Skiles was born and raised in the Los Angeles area, where he met his wife at Fuller Theological Seminary while working on his Master of Divinty. He went on to earn his Ph.D. at University of California, San Diego. Before coming to Regent, he served as a lecturer at California State University at San Marcos and Palomar Community College in Southern California.

His research focuses on the cultural and religious history of modern Germany, specifically the Nazi period. His recently published book, Preaching to Nazi Germany: The Pulpit and the Confessing Church, examines sermons delivered from the pulpits in the Third Reich and explores themes such as resistance to the Nazi regime as well as anti-Semitism within the German Protestant churches. His current research focuses on the ministries and experiences of German pastors of Jewish descent in Nazi Germany, as well as how films convey cultural memory of World War II and the Holocaust.

Dr. Skiles and his wife live in Virginia Beach with their three young children. He enjoys hiking, running and playing soccer with his kids. He is also an ordained minister in the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ.

Credentials

• Ph.D., History, University of California, San Diego
• Master of Divinity, Fuller Theological Seminary
• Master of Arts, History, California State University, Northridge
• Bachelor of Arts, History, University of California, Los Angeles

Publications

Preaching to Nazi Germany: The Pulpit and the Confessing Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2023).

"In Defense of a Just Society: Buber Contra Gandhi on Jewish Migration to Palestine" Religions 14, no. 4: 470. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14040470

"Franz Jägerstätter and the Way of the Cross: Conscientious Objection in the Greater German Reich" Religions 14, no. 1: 48. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14010048

"Karl Barth, Memory, and the Nazi Past: Confronting the Question of German Guilt" Religions 13, no. 10: 974, (2022). https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13100974

"Franz Hildebrandt on the BBC: Wartime Broadcasting to Nazi Germany." The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, (2022), 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046921002219

"Spying in God’s House: The Nazi Secret Police and Sermons of Opposition," in Church History and Religious Culture, 98 (2018), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1163/18712428-09803003

"Protests from the Pulpit: The Confessing Church and the Sermons of World War II," in Sermon Studies 1, no. 1, (2017), 1-23. https://mds.marshall.edu/sermonstudies/vol1/iss1/1

“‘The Bearers of Unholy Potential’: Confessing Church Sermons on the Jews and Judaism,” in Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 11, no. 1, (2016), 1-29. https://doi.org/10.6017/scjr.v11i1.9498

Affiliations

German Studies Association
Central European History Society
American Society of Church History