Mark Oppen­heimer has been cov­er­ing Amer­i­can reli­gion for 25 years. He holds a Ph.D. in reli­gious stud­ies from Yale, and has taught at Stan­ford, Wes­leyan, Welles­ley, NYU, Boston Col­lege, and Yale, where he was the found­ing direc­tor of the Yale Jour­nal­ism Ini­tia­tive. From 2010 to 2016, he wrote the ​“Beliefs” col­umn for The New York Times, and has writ­ten for pub­li­ca­tions includ­ing The New York­er, GQ, and Slate. He cre­at­ed Unortho­dox, and more recent­ly host­ed an eight-part pod­cast called Gate­crash­ers. He is the author of five books, includ­ing The Newish Jew­ish Ency­clo­pe­dia and Squir­rel Hill: The Tree of Life Syn­a­gogue Shoot­ing and the Soul of a Neighborhood.