Dear Friends and Grads of the GDR,
Our good news this year takes in the whole of Emory University. It spans the next five years, and promises to enhance the interdisciplinary study of religion at Emory for decades to come. The Strategic Initiative in Religion and the Human Spirit involves six professional schools in the University, ten departments in the College, and scores of scholars who teach and write in the field. Robert Franklin is serving as the University’s theme leader responsible for this initiative in Emory’s Strategic Plan, along with those on “Race and Difference” and “Pathways to Global Health.” Led by Laurie Patton and Carol Newsom, with the key participation of Gary Laderman, Liz Bounds, Tom Long and other GDR faculty members, the planning committee for Religion and the Human Spirit has developed a constellation of ground-breaking collaborative projects that have won full funding of $6.8 million over the next five years. Future funding sought to turn these visions into fully embodied institutional realities will likely come to more than $40-50 mil-lion overall. Charged by President Jim Wagner to “make it matter,” and launched by a cross-disciplinary faculty seminar on “Religion and the Common Good” slated to start next spring and embrace the full scope of its efforts, the Initiative has defined six areas of inquiry, including Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding; Contemplative Studies; Religion and Health; Religion and Sexuality; Religion and Science in the Public Sphere; and a Collaborative in Religion, Society, and the Arts. With the support of Emory’s Faculty Distinction Fund, new faculty positions will be created to further strengthen the University’s already remarkable resources in religion. In each area the Initiative will bring together academics, scholar-activists, and community leaders in programs of teaching, learning and research opened up to engage the public at large.
Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding : This initiative will develop a Center to study and advance public discourse on major issues that divide communities within and between religious traditions. At once global and “glocal” in focus, the Center brings a creative sense of pragmatic pluralism to the new reality of religions, no longer separated by oceans or national borders but living shoulder to shoulder and face to face in the same neighborhoods and households, as they wrestle with questions of life and death, procreation and love, gender and evolution. The Center will draw together scholars and religious leaders to generate transformative insight into the ways religion inflames conflict but also resolves, heals and transcends it.
In addition to sponsoring interdisciplinary research and conferences in these areas, the Center will establish a residential fellowship program to bring together senior scholars and postdoctoral fellows with religious leaders and community activists, public intellectuals and practitioners working at the intersection of healthcare and faith, legal and political leaders engaged in resolving public policy disputes divided by religious stance, and journalists who interpret issues of religion and society. In conjunction with the GDR and Candler, the Center anticipates mounting an “Emory Summit” of world religious leaders actively engaged in practices of conflict mediation and reconciliation. It foresees addressing issues of race and religion in cooperation with Atlanta’s
historically black colleges and universities, and its African-American communities of faith. It looks forward to developing a network of religiously related NGOs working in local urban settings. On campus the Center plans to partner with the Department of Religion and the Office of Religious Life to create inter-religious literacy programs to bring together Emory undergraduates in intellectual and experiential discovery of one another’s faith in ways that deepen their own. ...
GDR Alum News:
E. Byron (Ron) Anderson has been named to an endowed chair in Theology and Worship at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary.
Brad Braxton continues as Associate Professor of Homiletics and New Testament at Vanderbilt University. He is slated to deliver the 2006-07 Bray Lectures in Ghana and England to mark the 200 th anniversary of the end of the slave trade in the British Empire. He has been invited to preach at the 11:15 am worship service at Westminster Abbey in London on Sunday, March 11, 2007.
Mary Louise (Mel) Bringle , chair of the Humanities Division at Brevard College, has just been elected President of The Hymn Society in the US and Canada. Her collection of 75 original hymn texts, In Wind and Wonder, is being published this year by GIA. Texts from this collection as well as her earlier Joy and Wonder, Love and Longing (GIA 2002) are now being included in hymnals and supplements in denominations ranging from the ELCA through the Mennonites and Roman Catholics to the Church of Scotland.
Susan Hylen and Ted Smith welcomed a son, Bennett, into the world on April 30 th, 2006. Named 2007 SBL Regional Scholar for the Southeast, Susan continues as Mellon Assistant Professor of New Testament at Vanderbilt University. This spring saw publication of the Westminster Bible Companion to John, which Susan co-authored with Gail O’Day. As Assistant Professor of Ethics and Preaching, Ted directs the Program in Theology and Practice at the Vanderbilt Divinity School. His revised dissertation, The New Measures: A Theological History of Democratic Practice, is due out from Cambridge University Press next spring.
R. Kevin Jaques , now DGS in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University, won the al-Mutawa Research Fellowship at Oxford University’s Centre of Islamic Studies in 2004-2005. His Authority, Conflict, and the Transmission of Diversity in Medieval Islamic Law was published by Brill in 2006. He is now at work on his second book, on the life and works of Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani (d. 852/1448), forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
Laurel Kearns , Associate Professor of Sociology of Religion and Environmental Studies at Drew University, has been elected to the Council of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.
Brad Kelle has authored, Ancient Israel at War: 853-586 BC (Essential Histories; Oxford: Osprey Press), forthcoming in early 2007. He has chaired the SBL consultation on “Warfare in Ancient Israel” at the 2004-2006 annual meetings.
Deborah Krause was promoted to Professor of New Testament at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, where she also serves as Academic Dean.
Jacq Lapsley , now Associate Professor of Old Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, published her most recent book, Whispering the Word: Hearing Women’s Stories in the Old Testament, with WJK in 2005.
Carleen Mandolfo , Assistant Professor at Colby College, has been working recently on a biblical dialogic theology in articles forthcoming in a Semeia volume, in Biblical Interpretation, and in a book from SBL/Brill entitled, Daughter Zion Talks Back to the Prophets: A Dialogical Theological Reading of Lamentations.
Marie Marquardt is now teaching contemporary American religion in the Department of Religion at Agnes Scott College.
Thomas Massaro, S.J. , teaching at Weston Jesuit School of Theology, will publish his fifth book next year, United States Welfare Policy: A Catholic Response (Georgetown University Press, 2007). It revisits key issues examined in his 1997 dissertation to evaluate the ethics and effects of the 1996 welfare reform law at a decade’s distance.
Dora Rudo Mbuwayesango , Associate Professor of Old Testament at Hood Theological Seminary, has received a Lilly Theological Scholars Grant for 2006-07.
Barbara McClure, Assistant Professor of Pastoral Theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School, is teaching courses in pastoral care, theological anthropology, and ecclesial leadership, while revising her dissertation for publication, in her first year in Nashville. Graham Reside is directing Vanderbilt’s Cal Turner Program in Moral Leadership in the Professions -- spanning the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Management, Law and Divinity -- and serving as Assistant Professor of the Sociology of Religion in the Divinity School. Their daughter Anna has entered 1 st grade, and her sister Miriam just turned two.
Keith Graber Miller has been teaching since 1993 at Goshen College, where he now chairs the Department of Religion. He has contributed chapters to more than a dozen books on topics including the theology of childhood, the ethics of adoption, Mennonite higher education, and faith and politics. He co-edited Wrestling with the Text: Young Adult Perspectives on Scripture (Cascadia Press, 2006). Over the last five years he has lived and worked for several months at a time in Cuba, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, China, and Cambodia, while leading Goshen’s international education program.
Megan Bishop Moore and Brad Kelle co-edited, Israel’s Prophets and Israel’s Past: Essays on the Relationship of Prophetic Texts and Israelite History in Honor of John H. Hayes, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 446 (T&T Clark, 2006).
Doug Powe , Assistant Professor of Evangelism at Saint Paul School of Theology, has co-authored Transforming Evangelism: The Wesleyan Way of Sharing Faith (Discipleship Resources, 2006) with Hal Knight III, Professor of Wesleyan Studies at Saint Paul School of Theology.
Joe Reiff , chair of the Religion Department at Emory and Henry College, is at work on a book entitled, Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi’s ‘Modern Armageddon.’ Supported by a grant from the Louisville Institute, it tells the story of the 1963 statement signed by 28 ministers of the Mississippi Conference that called for freedom of the pulpit, proclaimed the Methodist Discipline’s declaration that the teachings of Jesus "[permit] no discrimination because of race, color, or creed," and opposed any attempt to close public schools if the state was forced to desegregate them. The statement sparked a firestorm of controversy in the church and state, eventually driving 20 of its signers out of Mississippi.
Elaine A. Robinson has been tenured and promoted to Associate Professor at Texas Christian University and its Brite Divinity School. Pilgrim Press published her Godbearing: Evangelism Reconceived earlier this year, Brite's students voted her the school’s award for excellence in teaching for 2005-06, and she was married this September 29th!
Thomas Stegman , Assistant Professor of New Testament at Weston Jesuit School of Theology, published his revised dissertation, The Character of Jesus: The Linchpin to Paul’s Argument in 2 Corinthians (AnBib 158; Roma: Pontificio Istituto Biblico) in 2005. He’s currently working on a commentary on 2 Corinthians for a new series, The New Catholic Commentary on Scripture.
Philip Thompson , Associate Professor of Theology at the North American Baptist Seminary, has co-edited Baptist Myths (Paternoster Press, 2005), and authored a chapter in it entitled, "’As It Was In The Beginning' (?): The Myth of Changelessness in Baptist Life and Belief." He also contributed a chapter on "North American Baptists" to The Baptist River, edited by Glenn Jonas (Mercer University Press, 2006).
David Vishanoff has moved from the University of South Carolina to a tenure-track position at the University of Oklahoma, where he is revising his dissertation for publication with an added chapter on early Islamic hermeneutical thought, supported by a 2006 NEH summer stipend.
Read the newletter as Adobe PDF