Lauren Frances Winner is an American author and lecturer. She is currently Assistant Professor of Christian Spirituality at Duke Divinity School

Duke Divinity School

The Divinity School at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina is one of thirteen seminaries founded and supported by the United Methodist Church. It has 39 full time and 18 part time faculty and over 500 full time students. The current dean of The Divinity School is Richard B. Hays, who replaced...

. Winner was born to a Jewish

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

 father and a Southern Baptist

Southern Baptist Convention

The Southern Baptist Convention is a United States-based Christian denomination. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant body in the United States, with over 16 million members...

 mother, and was raised Jewish. She converted to Orthodox Judaism

Orthodox Judaism

Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...

 in her freshman

Freshman

A freshman or fresher is a first-year student in secondary school, high school, or college. The term first year can also be used as a noun, to describe the students themselves A freshman (US) or fresher (UK, India) (or sometimes fish, freshie, fresher; slang plural frosh or freshmeat) is a...

 year at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, and then to Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

 while doing her Masters degree at Cambridge University. Her autobiographical

Autobiography

An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...

 Girl Meets God has been described as "a passionate and thoroughly engaging account of a continuing spiritual journey within two profoundly different faiths." A second memoir, Still: Notes on a Mid-faith Crisis, to be released in 2012, chronicles her descent into doubt and spiritual crisis that accompanied the failure of her brief marriage.

Winner has worked as a book editor of Beliefnet

Beliefnet

Beliefnet is a large multi-faith e-community that aims to provide a free forum for religious information and inspiration, spiritual tools, and discussions and dialogue groups. Beliefnet provides information about various religious and spiritual beliefs, ranging from Christian denominations to...

 and senior editor of Christianity Today

Christianity Today

Christianity Today is an Evangelical Christian periodical based in Carol Stream, Illinois. It is the flagship publication of its parent company Christianity Today International, claiming circulation figures of 140,000 and readership of 290,000...

. She caused a stir among evangelicals in 2000 when she wrote a column that matter-of-factly asserted that few young evangelicals (including she herself) took a commitment to premarital chastity too seriously. Julia Duin suggests that Winner was a "fairly recent convert" at the time, and "the evangelical response to Winner was livid." Duin goes on to relate that "Christianity Today quickly demoted her to a staff writer spot when people started asking why such a recent convert in her early twenties and still in grad school had managed to attain senior writer status at such a revered publication."

Winner is visiting fellow

Visiting fellow

A visiting fellow is an academic, often a senior academic, who is undertaking research at a different institution than his or her main institution for a limited period of time, often but not necessarily at a foreign institution. A visiting fellow can be paid or unpaid; sometimes the salary is paid...

 at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music

Yale Institute of Sacred Music

The Yale Institute of Sacred Music traces its roots to the School of Sacred Music founded at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The seminary's department of church music was brought to Yale in 1972, entering into partnership with the Yale School of Music and the Yale Divinity School...

. She was ordained as a transitional deacon

Transitional deacon

In the Roman Catholic Church, a transitional deacon is a celibate man who has been ordained a deacon and who intends to become a priest. Transitional deacons are usually ordained to the diaconate after they complete their third year at the theological seminary. For several centuries, all Roman...

 in the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia

Episcopal Diocese of Virginia

The Diocese of Virginia is a diocese of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America encompassing 38 counties in the northern and central parts of the state of Virginia. The diocese was organized in 1785 and is one of the Episcopal Church's nine original dioceses. However, the diocese has...

on June 4th, 2011. Her other books include Mudhouse Sabbath, Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity and A Cheerful and Comfortable Faith.