He became interested in Unitarian-Universalist history when he began a college research project on the controversial career of the Reverend Horace Holley as president of Transylvania University in Kentucky. His doctoral dissertation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2003) was a critical study of Orestes Brownson. His publications include essays on Thomas Paine's religious beliefs and on the decline of Calvinism, as well as review essays on Patrick Carey's biography of Brownson and Philip Gura's history of Transcendentalism.