Walter Capps holds a Master's degree and PhD from Yale Divinity School, along with an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University. He spent over three decades as a professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and authored "Religious Studies: The Making of a Discipline" in 1995. Capps was an anti-war activist in the 1960s and initiated a course on "Religion and the Impact of Vietnam" in 1979, serving on the advisory board for the Project on the Vietnam Generation. Despite a serious injury from a car accident, he won a congressional election in 1996.

Walter Capps's academic and activist background reveals a deeply rooted commitment to peace and religious studies, which informs his political approach. His anti-war activism in the 1960s and the course he initiated on "Religion and the Impact of Vietnam" suggest a nuanced, perhaps unexpected, alignment with pacifist principles. Despite lacking explicit policy stances in the provided data, Capps's resilience, exemplified by winning the election while seriously injured, hints at a strategic, almost principled inflexibility in the face of adversity.