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In Memoriam: Bruce Mullin

Former Professor of Religion at NC State died on July 11, 2024, at the age of seventy

Picture of Bruce Mullin
Bruce Mullin, Professor of Religion at NC State from 1985 to 1998. Photograph credit: Historical Society of the Episcopal Church

Robert Bruce Mullin, formerly Professor of Religion at NC State, died on July 11, 2024, at the age of seventy.

Born in 1953 in Plainfield, NJ, Bruce earned an A.B. in history from the College of William and Mary in 1975, a master’s in religion (M.A.R.) from Yale Divinity School in 1979, and a Ph.D. in religious studies, with a concentration in the History of Christianity, from Yale University in 1983. He taught briefly at Yale and at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, before joining NC State in 1985 as Assistant Professor of Religion. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1991 and to Professor in 1997.

Bruce published prolifically during his thirteen years in Raleigh. His output included three sole-authored monographs: Episcopal Vision/American Reality: High Church Theology and Social Thought in Evangelical America (Yale University Press, 1986); Moneygripe’s Apprentice: The Personal Narrative of Samuel Seabury III (Yale University Press, 1989); and Miracles and the Modern Religious Imagination (Yale University Press, 1996). He also co-authored The Scientific Theist: Francis Ellingwood Abbot and His Times (Mercer University Press, 1987) with Sydney Ahlstrom and co-edited the collection Reimagining Denominationalism: Interpretive Essays (Oxford University Press, 1994) with Russell E. Richey.

His teaching repertoire at NC State included the courses Religious Traditions of the World, American Religion after Darwin, Religion in American History, Religious Cults & Sects in America, and The Catholic Tradition.

Bruce departed NC State in 1998 to accept a position at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York City, where he taught full time until 2014. After a brief stint teaching part time, he retired from GTS as Professor Emeritus of Church History.

Even twenty-six years later, Bruce is fondly remembered in our department. Mary Kath Cunningham, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, recalls that he “cultivated a distinctive persona of professorial bow-tied eccentricity that nodded to earlier times, with deliberate elements of the curmudgeon and a rapier wit.” Yet behind this outward image, she added, lay “a conscientious and devoted teacher and a generous colleague, who will be remembered at NC State for his contributions to our Religious Studies program and his staunch advocacy for the significance of our discipline in our public university setting.”