Allen Dwight Callahan is a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After graduating from Princeton with a bachelor's degree in the Study of Religion, he took masters and doctoral degrees at Harvard University in the Study of Religion specializing in New Testament and the history and literature of early Christianity.

Dr. Callahan has taught biblical studies and theology at Boston College, Andover-Newton Theological School, and Holy Cross College , and joined the New Testament faculty of the Harvard Divinity School in 1992. There he taught courses in New Testament Greek, Coptic language and literature, and biblical interpretation. After seven years on the faculty at Harvard, Dr. Callahan accepted an associate professorship in the Religious Studies Department at Macalester College in St. Paul , Minnesota, where he taught for two years. Since 2003 he has been Professor of New Testament at the Seminário Teológico Batista de Nordeste in Bahia, Brazil.

Allen recording poetry in Connecticut for RANT, RAVE and RIFF

Dr. Callahan is an ordained Baptist minister, and has been active in Christian ministry as a preacher, Bible study leader, revivalist, and conference speaker. The author of three books and over twenty scholarly articles, he has lectured throughout the United States , Europe, and Latin America . In 1996 he delivered the Harrell F. Beck Lectures of the Massachusetts Bible Society, and has been a Fellow of the Salzburg Seminar in Salzburg Austria , Visiting Chaplain at the Chautauqua Institution, and Theologian in Residence at Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington, DC. He is a featured scholar on the television documentaries From Jesus to Christ, The Roman Empire in the First Century, and Portrait of a Radical: The Jesus Movement , and is a commentator in two documentaries on contemporary politics and spirituality, A Crisis of Faith and State of the Union.