Dr. Bracy V. Hill II
Husband. Historian. Hunter.
Bracy V. Hill II is a history professor with undergraduate studies in history and classics, and graduate degrees in theology and the historical studies of religion. He is an award-winning author of academic articles and reviews published in international peer-reviewed journals with a specialty in the study of marginalized religious movements in late medieval and early modern England.
Bracy was the primary author and editor of God, Nimrod, and the World: Exploring Christian Perspectives on Sport Hunting (Mercer University Press, Sports and Religion Series), a project he conceived and constructed out of his own interest in the historical presence of hunters in past societies, his personal commitment to a life enriched by hunting, and his own concern for the conservation of the natural environment and of hunting cultures for generations to come.
His work is committed to engendering informed and reflective hunters, aware of their places in the natural world, in history, and current societies through the process of education and the integration of their faith, passions, and lives dedicated to the life-long pursuit of wild game around the globe.
He regularly addresses audiences in academic and public environs, and he has spoken at universities and non-profits for chapters of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the Rotary Club, and Texas Wildlife Association.
“The history of hunting in America is a story of diverse and changing perceptions and of geographic and cultural identities; it is a history tied both to the perspectives of those cultures resident before the arrival of Europeans, of that especially of British immigrants of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and of a migration of people who traveled across a continent abounding with wilderness, subjugating nature to fire, the axe, the plow, domesticated animals, and the gun.” – Bracy Hill, God, Nimrod, and the World
“Since the Neolithic agricultural revolution and the advent of villages and towns, hunters and the practice of hunting have inhabited liminal places in human cultures. Hunters were and continue to be in the middle and on the edge. Historically, hunters have habitated intellectually and physically between wild nature and structured society.”
– Bracy Hill, God, Nimrod, and the World
God, Nimrod, and the World presents the perspectives of more than two-dozen authors on the controversial sport of hunting, surveying the relationship between the blood sport and the salvation religion of Christianity.
The first half of the book provides sketches of the diverse interpretations of hunting in Hebrew and Christian cultures of the last two millennia, finally giving voice to those in the field who are both practitioners and persons of faith. The second half offers prescriptive essays from theologians, ethicists, and historians about how humans and Christians might live with the natural world.
Awards & Recent Fellowships
Recipient of the Robert L. Reid Award for Outstanding Teaching in the Humanities in 2017 and in 2019—the two times it was presented in the last decade
Norman W. Cox Award, The Baptist History and Heritage Society, 2014. For “Suffering for Their Consciences: The Depiction of Anabaptists and Baptists in the Eighteenth-Century Histories of Daniel Neal,” Baptist History & Heritage (Fall 2014)
“Scattering the Morning Dew: An Exploration of Hunting in the Lone Star
State,” Bryce C. Brown Research Fellowship, Summer 2017
“Texas, God, and Game: A Texas Heritage of Hunting, Sport, and Religion,” Faculty Research Fellow, Baylor Institute for Oral History, 2015-2016.
Education
B.A., Missouri State University, 1995
M.A., University of Notre Dame, 1996
Ph.D., Baylor University, 2010
Areas of Interest
Sports and Religion
American and Texas History
English Dissenting Religion (1375-1750)
English Transatlantic Religion & Culture (1600-1750)