IRVING HEXHAM
A PERSONAL PROFILE

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travel guides

Irving was born in Whitehaven, Cumbria, England, and spent his childhood in various parts of the north of England.

He left school at 15 to serve a six-year apprenticeship in gas fitting. After its completion he worked as a manager and later a lecturer in gas technology for the North Western Gas Board in Manchester, England.

When Irving was eighteen he experienced an evangelical conversion. This event radically changed his life since none of the people he worked with pretended to be Christian. Shortly, after his conversion, Billy Graham came to Manchester and Irving participated in the crusade.

His attempt to interest a manager in the Graham Crusade led the Gas Board to send Irving on an apprentice exchange to Berlin, Germany, organized by Manchester's Industrial Chaplaincy

Visiting Communist East Berlin brought Irving face to face with both Marxism and Liberal Christianity creating his lifelong interest in Christian apologetics and the relationship between Christianity and culture.

The Brandenburg Gate

Irving has lived for over a year in Germany, three years in South Africa, twenty four years in Canada, and thirty years in Britain.

Irving is a committed Christian, a member of the Anglican Church, and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary, Canada.

He has published over 20 academic books including The Irony of Apartheid (1981), Understanding Cults and New Religions (1986), and The Concise Dictionary of Religion (1994).

In addition Irving has published over sixty academic articles and more than one hundred book reviews.

Zondervan's Christian Travelers Guides series is his brainchild. He is the author of The Christian Travelers Guide to Great Britain (2001) and co-author of The Christian Travelers Guide to Germany (2001)

Irving is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Deutschen Vereinigung für Religionsgeschichte, the Berliner Gesellschaft für Missionsgeschichte, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the Evangelical Theological Society,and the South African Institute of Race Relations.

While still working at the Gas Board, Irving was encouraged by Francis Schaefer and Clark Pinnock to obtain a degree. He entered the University of Lancaster in 1967 to read for a degree in Religious Studies and studied under Professor Ninian Smart, Edward Conze, James Richmond, Robert Morgan, and James Dickie (Yakub Zaki).

From Lancaster he went on to Bristol University to work with Fred Welbourn. He wrote his M.A. thesis on New Age thought in Glastonbury (1971). This was the first British thesis on a new religious movement and the first on the New Age in Europe or North America.

His Bristol University Ph.D. was supervised by Kenneth Ingham in the Department of History. It dealt with Afrikaner Nationalism and the origins of apartheid as an ideology.

Irving has taught at Bishop Lonsdale College, Derby, Regent College, Vancouver, the University of Manitoba and the University of Calgary. Among the many universities where he has given invited lectures are the universities of Bristol, Cape Town, Lancaster, Leipzig, Marburg, and South Africa in Pretoria.

His studies have involved both archival research and fieldwork in Africa, Europe and North America.

Irving is married to Professor Karla Poewe and has two children Jeremy and Janet.