Robert T. Handy (1918–2009) was the Henry Sloane Coffin Professor Emeritus of Church History at Union Theological Seminary. He earned a BA from Brown University and a Master of Divinity from the Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, and in 1943, he was ordained as a Baptist minister. He taught at the Union Theological Seminary from 1950 to 1986, and his other books include A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities and A History of the Churches in the United States and Canada (Oxford History of the Christian Church).