Christian Bailey

Christian Bailey is associate professor of history and a contributing member of the gender studies faculty. Most of his courses explore modern European history, typically from a global perspective. 

His current research explores the rise of environmentalism within the Christian Churches since the 1970s. Religions now make up the world’s largest civil society movement on climate change but they have been largely neglected in the field of environmental history. Bailey begins  his story outside of Europe, tracing how Christian missionaries observed the sharpest impacts of global warming in the Global South. He profiles how the climate crisis provoked a transformation of Christian theology: to become less human-centric and to reimagine what salvation might look like for a planet under threat.

Bailey’s previous book focused on love within German Jewish communities (German Jews in Love: A History, Stanford University Press, 2022). The book starts in the 1870s, when marriages between Jews and Christians were first permitted, and ends a century later, in the aftermath of the sexual revolution. He argues that by studying sources such as diaries, love letters, and court reports, we can understand how individuals unwittingly provoked cultural, social, and ultimately political change by such simple acts as falling in love. 

Between Yesterday and Tomorrow: German Visions of Europe, 1926–1950 (2013, paperback 2016) was Bailey’s first book. It spotlighted German ideas for integrating Europe in the mid-20th century.