Rev. John C. Rankin is the President of the Theological Education Institute (TEI), and of the Mars Hill Society in Hartford, CT. A West Hartford native, he grew up in an agnostic Unitarian setting, influenced by secular humanism and Darwinian evolution before his conversion to a biblical faith as a 14-year old in 1967.

John is a graduate of South Kent School, Denison University (B.A. History), Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (M.Div.) and Harvard Divinity School (Th.M. Ethics and Public Policy); he has also done graduate work in English at the University of Pittsburgh, and continues with occasional post-graduate auditing in Islamic studies at Hartford Seminary. He is an alumnus of the Fellowship of Christians in University and Schools (FOCUS), and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF).

He served in pastoral ministry from 1978-1983, headed up a New England wide evangelical pro-life organization in Gloucester and Boston, MA from 1983-1991, founded the TEI in Boston in 1990 before returning to his native Connecticut in 1992, and founded the Mars Hill Society in 2005. He is ordained through the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Wakefield, MA and his home church since 1992 is the Covenant Presbyterian Church of Simsbury, CT.

John is author of the three-volume series, First the Gospel, Then Politics... (1999-2008) and The Six Pillars of Honest Politics: The Biblical Nature of a Level Playing Field (2007). He and his wife Nancy were married in 1977 and have three sons (1978, 1981 and 1985) and one daughter (1990).