Thomas Albert (Tal) Howard is a Professor of History and the Humanities at Valparaiso University, Indiana.[1] He formerly directed the Center for Faith and Inquiry and was Professor of History at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts.[citation needed] He completed his MA (1992) and Ph.D. (1996) at the University of Virginia, concentrating in modern European intellectual and religious history. He is founding director of Gordon College's honors program, the Jerusalem and Athens Forum,[2] a one-year, great-books course of study in the history of Christian thought and literature. He served as a principal grant writer and project director of a multimillion-dollar project funded by the Lilly Endowment, entitled "Critical Loyalty: Christian Vocation at Gordon College."[3]