David Dollahite is a Camilla Eyring Kimball Professor of Family Life at Brigham Young University where he teaches classes and conducts research on the links between religion and family life.
He has twice been an Eliza R. Snow University Fellow and has served as an Associate Director of the School of Family Life. His scholarship focuses on religion and family life in the Abrahamic faiths, Latter-day Saint family life, and faith and fathering.
He has been a visiting scholar at the Stanford University Center on Adolescence, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Dominican University of California, and was the Jawaharlal Nehru Visiting Scholar at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India.
He is Co-Director (with Dr. Loren Marks) of the American Families of Faith Project in which more than 250 Christian, Jewish, and Muslim families from 34 states have been interviewed. Findings from this ongoing project have resulted in over 100 articles in scholarly journals and three books.
Professor Dollahite obtained a bachelor’s degree in family life and a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy from BYU (1985) and a doctorate in family studies from the University of Minnesota (1989).
He has published over 100 scholarly articles and chapters and has edited or co-edited four books including Generative Fathering (Sage, 1998) and three volumes on LDS family life: Successful Marriages and Families (BYU Studies, forthcoming), Helping and Healing Our Families(Deseret Book, 2005), and Strengthening Our Families (Bookcraft, 2000).
He also enjoys writing hymn texts and two of his hymns (“May Thy Face of Shining Splendor” and “As Families in the Latter Days”) have received awards from The LDS Church and have been performed at the LDS Music Festival on Temple Square in Salt Lake City.
He was raised in the Episcopal Church and served for three years (age 9-12) at Holy Innocents Episcopal Church as an acolyte (altar boy). When he was 19 years old he joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and then served a two-year LDS mission in New England (1979-81). Over the years he has served in various capacities in the LDS Church including as a bishop, bishop’s counselor, high councilor, stake mission president, ward mission leader, young men’s president, and Sunday school teacher.
David and his wife, Mary Kimball Dollahite, J.D. have been married since August of 1983 and are the lucky parents of seven terrific kids—Rachel, Erica, Camilla, Kathryn, Spencer, Jonathan, and Luke and are grandparents of David, Edward, and Eliza Lambourne (children of Rachel and Collin Lambourne).