Carl Bowman is an American sociologist, who is widely recognized for his studies of Anabaptist religious groups and is perhaps the foremost expert on the social and cultural history of the Church of the Brethren.
Education
Bowman completed a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Elizabethtown College in 1979, an Master of Surgery in Sociology from the in 1981, and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1989. His dissertation, "Beyond Plainness: Cultural Transformation in the Church of the Brethren from 1850 to the Present," was completed under the direction of James Davison Hunter, author of Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (1991).
Career
Bowman was Chair of the Department of Sociology at Bridgewater College in Bridgewater, Virginia from 1988 until 2007. He has served as Director of Survey Research for the University of Virginia"s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture since 1995. Bowman has designed social surveys on political and moral culture that were fielded by the Gallup Organization and was a statistical software consultant for SYSTAT Software.
Except for short periods in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Spain, he has lived in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains for most of his life.