Steven C. Harper

Steven C. Harper is a covenant son of God who strives to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. His primary work is to teach the restored gospel of Jesus Christ in ways that help students develop resilient faith in, and become lifelong disciples of, the Savior.

He is a Visiting Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and a professor of Church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University. He serves as the executive editor of The Wilford Woodruff Papers. From 2018–2025 he was editor in chief of BYU Studies. From 2012–2018 he was the managing historian and a general editor of Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days. From 2002–2012 he was a volume editor of The Joseph Smith Papers.

Professor Harper is married to sculptor Jennifer Sebring. They graduated from BYU in 1994, she in art education and he in history. He earned an MA in American history from Utah State University, where his thesis analyzed determinants of conversion to the restored gospel in the 1830s. He published chapters of his thesis as articles in the Journal of Mormon History and Religion and American Culture that were awarded by the Mormon History Association with the T. Edgar Lyon Award for best article of the year and the Juanita Brooks Award for best graduate student paper. He earned a PhD in early American history from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he was Lawrence Henry Gipson Dissertation Fellow.

Professor Harper joined the religion and history faculties at BYU Hawaii in 2000 and the Church history and doctrine faculty at BYU in 2002. He taught at the Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies in 2011–2012. He is the recipient of research awards including a Gest Fellowship from Haverford College's Quaker Collection, a Mayers Fellowship from the Huntington Library, and the Eliza R. Snow Fellowship from Brigham Young University.

Professor Harper is the author of books including Promised Land (Lehigh University Press, 2006), Making Sense of the Doctrine and Covenants (Deseret, 2008, winner of the Harvey B. and Susan Easton Black Award), Joseph Smith's First Vision (Deseret, 2012), First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins (Oxford University Press, 2019, winner of the Harvey B. and Susan Easton Black Award and the Smith-Petit Best Book Award), Let's Talk About the Law of Consecration (Deseret, 2022), and Wrestling with the Restoration (Deseret, 2024). He has published dozens of articles and is working on a study of The Doctrine and Covenants to be published in the Guides to Sacred Texts series by Oxford University Press.