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 M.Div. He went on to earn his Ph.D. at the 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 modern Germany’s cultural and religious history, specifically the Nazi period. His dissertation, titled Preaching to Nazi Germany: The Confessing Church on National Socialism, the Jews, and the Question of Opposition, 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 and how films convey cultural memory of World War II and the Holocaust.

Skiles and his wife live in Virginia Beach with their three young children. He enjoys hiking, running and playing soccer with his kids.

Credentials

• Ph.D. in History, University of California, San Diego
• M.Div., Fuller Theological Seminary
• M.A. in History, California State University, Northridge
• B.A. in History, University of California, Los Angeles

Publications

"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

Awards

Faculty Research Grant, Regent University, Virginia Beach, 2016-17

Judaic Studies Research Grant, University of California, San Diego, 2011

Leo Baeck Institute – DAAD Research Grant, Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, 2009

History Department Fellowship, University of California, San Diego, 2006