Anthea Butler is Geraldine R. Segal Professor of Social Thought and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Butler’s research and teaching focus on African American religion and history, race, politics, Evangelicalism, gender and sexuality, media, and popular culture. She is the author of White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America (Ferris and Ferris 2021) Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making a Sanctified World (UNC 2007), and numerous articles and book chapters on aspects of religion in American history. Butler was a Presidential Fellow at Yale Divinity School for the 2019-2020 academic year, and her research on the Prosperity Gospel in Nigeria was supported by a Luce/ACLS grant from the Program in Religion, Journalism, and International Affairs. She has received research fellowships from the Louisville Institute, Harvard Divinity School, and Princeton University, among others. A sought-after commentator on the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, The History Channel and PBS, Butler regularly writes opinion pieces covering religion, race, politics and popular culture for The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NBC, and The Guardian and has been a consultant for several PBS documentaries on religion in America. She is a past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies and past president of the American Society of Church History. Her current project is Reading Race: How Publishing created a lifeline for Black Baptists in Post Reconstruction America.