Stephen J. Stein (born March 22, 1940) holds the Ph.D. from Yale University. He has served as Chair of the Department of Religious Studies and also as Director of the American Studies Program at Indiana University where he taught for 35 years. He retired in May 2005. He was named Chancellor's Professor in 1995. In 1994 he was the President of the American Society of Church History. In 1995 he was the recipient of the Tracy Sonneborn Award for Excellence in Teaching and Research. He has been the recipient of numerous grants, including two research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the editor of three volumes in the Yale Edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Apocalyptic Writings (1977), Notes on Scripture (1998), and The 'Blank Bible' (forthcoming 2006). His volume, The Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers (Yale Press, 1992) was awarded the Philip Schaff Prize by the American Society of Church History. His research interests have focused heavily on eighteenth-century colonial American religious history, but his research publications also span the broad topic of apocalyptic and millennial studies as well as the study of New Religious Movements. He has published articles in such journals as Church History, Harvard Theological Review, William and Mary Quarterly, New England Quarterly, Early American Literature, Filson Club History Quarterly, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Journal of the Early Republic, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Communal Societies, American Quarterly, Religion and American Culture, etc., etc.. Stein's volume on the Shakers is widely regarded as the definitive history of that religious community; it spans more than two centuries of Shaker experience. His editorial work with the Edwards Edition has opened an area of scholarship, namely, Edwards's biblical writings, that had received very little scholarly attention prior to his work. His years