Bruce Woll

Bruce Woll spent 27 years in the exploding computer and information technology industry as a trainer and consultant, from 1984 until his retirement in 2011. During that time he earned a D.Ed. from Northern Illinois University (1997). Bruce has also been a lifelong student of religion, earning a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1978 writing on the origins of Christianity under the historian of religions, Jonathan Z. Smith. Bruce has spent the last decade and a half seeking ways to fight back against what he has come to call fundamentalized capitalism, most recently as a member of the American Monetary Institute, the Alliance for Just Money, and the Public Banking Institute. Publications include his 1978 dissertation on political conflict in first-century Christianity, entitled Johannine Christianity in Conflict: Authority, Rank, and Succession, published in 1981; “Locating the Study of Religion in a Theory of the Academy: The Unexamined Relationship between Jonathon Z. Smith’s Two Careers,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 31 (2019): 309-46, and "The Empty Ideal: A Critique of Continuing Learning in the Professions, by Cyril O. Houle," Adult Education, 34/3, Spring, 1984. His presentation at the 2022 conference was titled "Who we are in a Democratic Society".