Leigh Eric Schmidt is the Edward C. Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. He joined the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics in 2011. He has held research fellowships at Stanford and Princeton and also through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Schmidt's recent books include Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation (Princeton University Press, 2016) and The Church of Saint Thomas Paine: A Religious History of American Secularism (Princeton University Press, 2021). Schmidt earned his undergraduate degree in history and religious studies from the University of California, Riverside, in 1983 and his Ph.D. in religion from Princeton in 1987.