Carl Raschke was born in New York, New York and grew up in Oklahoma City and Denison, Texas.  He graduated from high school in Lafayette, California and received his BA from Pomona College, his MA from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and his PhD from Harvard University.   His father Charles Frederick Raschke was a Commander in the US Navy and a Vice-President with Safeway Stores.  His mother Grace Van Nostrand Raschke was a librarian who received a master’s degree from Columbia University.

He is married to Sunny Raschke, a professional artist who is originally from Chicago.  They divide their time between Colorado, Texas, and their five-acre retreat property “Wings of the Eagle” in Southern Oklahoma.

His son Erik Raschke is a published novelist who has worked as a journalist, a creative writing instructor, and a teacher in the New York City public school system.  He has three grandchildren.

Carl Raschke recounts the most formative years of his life as 1967-69 when he was a graduate student in the San Francisco Bay Area, the “time and place of true apocalyptic upheaval in America when and where it became obvious what Hegel meant by ‘the end of history’ in its full dimensions.”  He adds, “I would say that the events of those days, in which I was far more than a spectator,  made me everything I pretty much am.”  

At the same time,  he reminds us that we all have unfinished work to do, especially in coming to terms with the land in which we find ourselves, and “the past which harbors its story”, and the peoples who have inhabited it over the millennia, who also “in often mysterious ways just happen to be there for us when things get crazy.”