Gordon Shepherd obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Utah and his PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is currently professor of sociology at the University of Central Arkansas. With Gary Shepherd, he is co-author of Mormon Passage: A Missionary Chronicle (University of Illinois Press, 1998), Binding Heaven and Earth: Patriarchal Blessings in the Prophetic Development of Early Mormonism (Penn State University Press, 2012), and co-editor (with Lavina Fielding Anderson) of Voices for Equality: Ordain Women and Resurgent Mormon Feminism (Greg Kofford Books, 2015).