Robert G Ingram

Robert G. Ingram is a Professor of Humanities at the Civitas Institute and the Director of the Program on Humanities and the Western Tradition at the University of Texas at Austin.

Before joining the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Ingram taught at the University of Florida, where he was Professor of Humanities and Associate Director of the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education. Earlier he was a professor of history at Ohio University where he was also the founding director of the Menard Family George Washington Forum.

Dr. Ingram’s research and teaching focus on the early history of liberal democracy in the English-speaking world, with a particular emphasis on religion and politics. In addition, as the co-editor of a book on the rise of capitalism, Capitalism: Histories, (Boydell & Brewer, 2025), he has been praised for “balancing historical specificity with theoretical insight, thereby challenging oversimplified narratives” of capitalism.

The author of Reformation Without End: Religion, Politics and the Past in Post-Revolutionary England (Manchester University Press, 2018) and Religion, Reform and Modernity in the Eighteenth Century: Thomas Secker and the Church of England (The Boydell Press, 2007), he is also the co-editor of a number of books, and has contributed many chapters to edited volumes. He also co-edits a book series on intellectual history called Ideas and Practices, 1300–1850.

Dr. Ingram’s current book project is The Religion of the State: Sovereignty, Pluralism and Constitutionalism, 1890–1920. He is also currently co-editing a scholarly edition of the memoirs and correspondence of the Whig politician John Lord Hervey (1696–1743), which will be published by Oxford University Press, and solely editing an edition of Conyers Middleton’s Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Power (1749), which will be published by the Liberty Fund.

In addition to academic journals, Dr. Ingram has written for the popular press including for National Review and the Claremont Review of Books, among others.

Born and brought up in Louisiana, Dr. Ingram received his B.A. from The University of the South and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.

Books

Reformation Without End: Religion, Politics and the Past in Post-Revolutionary England (Manchester University Press, 2018).

Religion, Reform and Modernity in the Eighteenth Century: Thomas Secker and the Church of England (The Boydell Press, 2007).

Edited Books

Capitalism: Histories, eds. Robert G. Ingram and James M. Vaughn (Boydell & Brewer, 2025).

People Power: Popular Sovereignty from Machiavelli to Modernity, eds. Robert G. Ingram and Christopher Barker (Manchester University Press, 2022).

Freedom of Speech, 1500-1850, eds. Robert G. Ingram, Jason Peacey and Alex W. Barber (Manchester University Press, 2020).

God in the Enlightenment, eds. William J. Bulman and Robert G. Ingram (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Between Sovereignty and Anarchy: The Politics of Violence in the American Revolutionary Era, eds. Patrick Griffin, Robert G. Ingram, Peter Onuf and Brian Schoen (University of Virginia Press 2015).

Religious Identities in Britain, 1660–1832, eds. William Gibson and Robert G. Ingram (Ashgate Publishing, 2005).

Articles & Book Chapters

‘Immanence, Transcendence and Christ in Post-Victorian England’, Anglican and Episcopal History (forthcoming, 2026).

‘Sin, Salvation and Spirits in Eighteenth-Century England’, History of European Ideas (forthcoming, 2026).

‘Capitalism: Histories and Institutions’, in Capitalism: Histories, eds. Robert G. Ingram and James M. Vaughn (Boydell & Brewer, 2025), pp. 1–25.

‘“Such mischievous consequences to the Peace and Order of the Church”: Christ, Publics and Politics in Hanoverian England', in Radical Ideas and the Crisis of Christianity in England, 1640–1740, eds. Katherine East and Alex W. Barber (The Boydell Press, 2024), pp. 218–237.

‘“The real question of freedom”: The State, the Church and the Individual, c. 1860–c. 1920’ (with Adeline Fitzwater), The Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture 9:1 (June 2023), pp. 69–96.

‘Priestcraft, Enthusiasm, Bishops and Eighteenth-Century Intellectual Life’, in The Anglican Episcopate, 1689–1800, eds. William Gibson and Nigel Aston (University of Wales Press, 2023), 203–239.

‘People Power’ (with Christopher Barker), in People Power: Popular Sovereignty from Machiavelli to Modernity, eds. Robert G. Ingram and Christopher Barker (Manchester University Press, 2022), pp. 1–29.

‘Sovereignty, God and the Historians’, in People Power: Popular Sovereignty from Machiavelli to Modernity, pp. 227–253.

‘“My Kingdom is not of this World”: J.N. Figgis and the Politics of England’s Religious Past’, in Neville Figgis, CR: His Life, Thought and Significance, ed. Paul Avis (Brill, 2022), pp. 93–119.

‘The Reformation in the Age of Jefferson', in Ireland and America: Empire, Revolution and Sovereignty, eds. Frank Cogliano and Patrick Griffin (University of Virginia Press, 2021), pp. 178–197.

‘“State Whiggs, but such Bigotted Church Toryes”: The Irish Toleration Act of 1719 and the Politics of Religion’, Parliamentary History 41 (June 2021), pp. 343–361.

‘Freedom of Speech in England and the Anglophone World, 1500–1850’ (with Jason Peacey and Alex W. Barber), in Freedom of Speech, 1500–1850, eds. Robert G. Ingram, Jason Peacey and Alex W. Barber (Manchester University Press, 2020), pp. 1–27.

‘“The Warr…against heaven by Blasphemors and Infidels”: Prosecuting Heresy in Enlightenment England’ (with Alex W. Barber), in Freedom of Speech, 1500–1850, (Manchester University Press, 2020), pp. 151–170.

'The Church of England, 1714–1783', in Establishment and Empire, 1662–1829, ed. Jeremy Gregory (The Oxford History of Anglicanism, Volume II) (Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 49–67.

'Religion, Enlightenment an the Paradox of Innovation, c. 1650–1750' (with William J. Bulman), in Religion and Innovation: Antagonists or Partners?, ed. Donald Yerxa (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), pp. 100–112.

'Conyers Middleton's Cicero: Enlightenment, Scholarship and Polemic', in Brill's Companion to the Reception of Cicero, ed. William H.F. Altman (Brill, 2015), pp. 95–123.

'Representing and Misrepresenting the History of Puritanism in Eighteenth-Century England', in The Church on its Past (Studies in Church History, 49), eds. Peter Clarke and Charlotte Methuen (The Boydell Press, 2013), pp. 202–215.

‘“From barbarism to civility, from darkness to light”: Preaching Empire as Sacred History’, in The Oxford Handbook of the British Sermon, 1689–1901, eds. Keith Francis and William Gibson (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 481–496

‘Betraying the Word’, Fides et Historia 44:2 (Summer/Fall 2012), pp. 101–110.

‘“Popish Cut-Throats against us”: Papists, Protestants and the Problem of Allegiance in Eighteenth- Century Ireland’, in From the Reformation to the Permissive Society. A Miscellany in Celebration of the 400th Anniversary of Lambeth Palace Library [The Church of England Record Society], ed. Stephen Taylor (The Boydell Press, 2010), pp. 151–209.

‘Nature, History and the Search for Order: The Boyle Lectures, 1730–1785’, in God’s Bounty? The Churches and the Natural World (Studies in Church History, 46), eds. Tony Claydon and Peter Clarke (The Boydell Press, 2010), pp. 276–292.

‘“The weight of historical evidence”: Conyers Middleton and the Eighteenth-Century Miracles Debate’, in Religion, Politics and Dissent, 1660–1832, eds. William Gibson and Robert Cornwall (Ashgate, 2010), pp. 85–109.

‘“The clergy who affect to call themselves orthodox”: Thomas Secker and the Defence of Anglican Orthodoxy, 1758–68’, Discipline and Diversity (Studies in Church History, 43), eds. Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory (The Boydell Press, 2007), pp. 342–353.

‘Sykes’s Shadow: Thoughts on the Recent Historiography of the Church of England’, CROMOHS: Cyber Review of Moden Historiography (2007).

‘The trembling Earth is God’s Herald: earthquakes, religion, and public life in Britain during the 1750s’, in The Lisbon earthquake of 1755: Representations and reactions (SVEC 2005:02), eds. Theodore E.D. Braun and John B. Radner (Voltaire Foundation, 2005), pp. 97–115.

‘William Warburton, Divine Action, and Enlightened Christianity’, in Religious Identities in Britain, 1660–1832, pp. 97–117.

‘Introduction’ (with William Gibson) in Religious Identities in Britain, 1660–1832, pp. 1–7.

‘Archbishop Thomas Secker, Anglican identity, and relations with foreign Protestants in the mid- eighteenth century’, in From Strangers to Citizens: The Integration of Immigrant Communities in Britain, Ireland and Colonial America, 1550–1750, eds. Randolph Vigne and Charles Middleton (Sussex Academic Press, 2001), pp. 527–538.