Thomas J. Davis is Associate Dean for Academic Programs, Professor of Religious Studies, and Professor of Philanthropic Studies at the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI. Joining the faculty in 1989, he has also worked since then with Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation. After receiving a B.A. in history from West Georgia College (now the University of West Georgia) and an M.Div. from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, he earned his PhD in the history of Christianity and the history of Christian thought from the University of Chicago.Professor Davis has proudly spent his entire professional academic career at IUPUI with his responsibilities split between the Department of Religious Studies and the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture. He chaired the department from 2003-2008. From 2008-2011 he sat as the Thomas H. Lake Chair in Religion and Philanthropy.Professor Davis's interests (and writings) are wide ranging.His academic specialty is the history and thought of the European Reformation. His first book, The Clearest Promises of God: The Development of Calvin's Eucharistic Teaching (1995), has been called "epoch making." Another book on Eucharistic thought in the Reformation, This Is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought, appeared in 2008, characterized in review as both "elegant and erudite." In 2005, Davis published John Calvin, a biography targeted for high school students. An edited book that focuses on John Calvin's influence on American culture, John Calvin's American Legacy, came out in 2010. Religion in Philanthropic Organizations: Family, Friend, Foe? is an edited volume that came out of Davis's work as Lake Chair.Two books on death/dying/grief appeared in the 1990s. By the Waters of Babylon: One Family's Faith-Journey through Illness appeared in 1995. It was optioned by Readers' Digest. In 1999 it was translated into Chinese. In 1998, God in My Grief: The Music of Grace when Loss Lives On appeared. Both works are nonfiction for general audiences.Davis has published three novels. The first, The Christmas Quilt (2000), received glowing reviews, from Michigan to Florida, Virginia to California. It has appeared in six different print editions, including a Doubleday Book Club edition. The Aluminum Christmas Tree followed in 2005 and received an Ingram Book Company Premier Pick designation. Both novels saw publication in mass-market paperback editions. The Devil Likes to Sing is the latest book from Thomas J. Davis (2014). It is a quirky fable about the nature of temptation. Philip Gulley has said that it "ranks with Twain for wit and satire." It's a laugh-out-loud book that also deals seriously with questions of self-identity.