David Chidester

David Chidester was born in 1952 in Pasadena, California. He was educated at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies. After lecturing there for a few years, he moved in 1984 to teach at the University of Cape Town. Since 1994 he has been Professor of Comparative Religion and is now Head of the Department of Religious Studies there. He is also Director of the Institute for Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (ICRSA).

Professor Chidester has published extensively on Christianity and comparative religion, including Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa and Salvation and Suicide: An Interpretation of Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown, both of which won the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in Religious Studies.