Dr. Alex Sider, an associate professor of religion at Bluffton University, has been appointed as the university’s Harry and Jean Yoder Scholar in Bible and Religion.

The five-year appointment provides Sider with annual funds to support scholarly research and writing in areas related to Anabaptist-Mennonite life and thought.

A member of Bluffton’s religion faculty since 2006, Sider received his doctorate in theology and ethics with minors in church history and political theory from Duke University.  His dissertation, titled “To See History Doxologically: History and Holiness in John Howard Yoder’s Ecclesiology,” was published by Eerdmans in 2011.

Sider is also the author of numerous journal articles on ethics and the history of Christian theology, and on theology and disabilities studies.

The appointment was formerly held by Dr. J. Denny Weaver, professor emeritus of religion, Mennonite theologian and editor of the C. Henry Smith Book Series.