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Dr. Robert Tatum is the Cary Caperton Owen Distinguished Professor in Economics at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. His teaching and research traditionally concerned international and development macroeconomics, supported in part through a Fulbright-Hays Award to Brazil. In recent years, he has begun exploring a new area of scholarship in theology-oriented economics-supported policymaking. Publications in this line of research can be found in the Journal of Markets and Morality, Faith and Economics, and the Journal of Economics, Theology, and Religion. Complementing this new scholarship, Robert has developed an interdisciplinary course on “Morality and Material Progress” with support from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities. Along with KLC, he considers one of his intellectual homes to be the Cambridge-based Association for Christian Economics. In his free time, Robert loves spending time with his wife and two children and enjoys traveling and exploring the great outdoors through hiking and trail running.
Jenny is our Research Fellow in Communication, Media and Journalism. She specialises in religious literacy and pioneered religious literacy in journalism. She has a doctorate in religion from the School of Oriental and African Studies, and has been published many times in academic journals and the mainstream and on-line media including the Guardian, the Times and, in translation, the European press. Her books include Faith and Power: Christianity and Islam in ‘Secular’ Britain with Lesslie Newbigin and Lamin Sanneh (SPCK 1998 and Wipf&Stock 2005), and A Wild Constraint (Continuum 2008), an extended essay on contemporary sexuality.
Jason Thacker serves as chair of research in technology ethics and director of the research institute at The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He also serves as an adjunct instructor of philosophy, ethics, and worldview at Boyce College in Louisville, KY. He is the author of “Following Jesus in the Digital Age” and “The Age of AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity.” He also serves as the editor of “The Digital Public Square: Christian Ethics in a Technological Society” with B&H Academic and co-editor of a forthcoming series on essentials in Christian ethics. He is a graduate of The University of Tennessee in Knoxville and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he is currently pursuing a PhD in Ethics and Public Theology. He is married to Dorie and they have two sons.
Michael is an Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University’s Work, Ethics, and Faith Initiative and the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education. He has held visiting fellowships and lectureships at Yale Divinity School, Harvard Divinity School’s Center for the Study of World Religions, and the Département de Philosophie at l’École normale supérieure, Paris. He was a recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt award, spending three years at Universität Tübingen in the Institute für antikes Judentum und hellenistische Religionsgeschichte. Michael’s academic interests and focus are informed and complemented by his prior business experience where he counseled corporate clients on matters relating to brand equity, communication strategy, and corporate trust. He is the author of two monographs: Remembrance of Things Past?, comparing the “historical Jesus” genre with recent trends in social memory theory; and The Godman and the Sea, where he reads varying representations of the sea in antiquity, Judaism, and early Christianity through the rubrics of desolation and trauma. Current works include a volume on “smell” and moral reasoning, and a second that engages the so-called attention economy. He is also co-editing a volume on the history of corporate responses to racial unrest and another on the future of work.
Dr. Heath Thomas (Ph.D., University of Gloucestershire) was installed as the 16th President of Oklahoma Baptist University (OBU) in January 2020. He also serves as Professor of Old Testament at OBU. Dr. Thomas served as Dean of the Hobbs College and Professor of Old Testament from 2015-2019 and as Director of Ph.D. Studies and Associate Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina from 2007-2015. His academic expertise lay in biblical books of Lamentations and the Minor Prophets, and he has written or edited major volumes on Lamentations (Bloomsbury, 2021; Sheffield Phoenix, 2013; Pickwick Press, 2011), Habakkuk (Eerdmans, 2018; Lexham, 2016), and the Minor Prophets (IVP Academic, forthcoming; Baker Academic, forthcoming). He also has a deep interest in theological reading, co-editing with Dr. Craig Bartholomew A Manifesto for Theological Interpretation (Baker Academic, 2016).
Fritz lives in Cape Town, South Africa, where he works as the director of the Student YMCA Christian Study Centre at the University of Cape Town. He arrived there with undergraduate degrees in economics (University of Stellenbosch) and theology (North West University). During his two-decade stint at the UCT Student YMCA, he completed a Master of Arts degree in interdisciplinary studies at Wheaton College, combining core course from the missions & intercultural studies and biblical studies programs respectively, and started (though, unfortunately, not completed) a PhD under the supervision of Dr Michael Goheen and Dr Craig Bartholomew during a year-long sabbatical in Canada. His theology and practice of mission was also profoundly shaped by several educational pilgrimages, most notably to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I studied under Dr René Padilla; to Jerusalem (and Palestine) where he read and did research at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute; and to Kampala, Uganda, where I participated in the Great Lakes Initiative (GLI, linked to Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation). He is married to Dr Tshilidzi van der Lecq (Ophthalmologist) and has a delightful little daughter.
Emma lives and works at the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker House in South Bend, Indiana. She shares in the community work of hosting a drop-in shelter, tending a community garden and accompanying the marginalized and houseless through offering hospitality in her house. Emma grew up in Scotland, where she developed an interest in the connections between geographical places and interior landscapes. Spending her early years in a Scottish terrain, she became attuned to the borders and intersections between the wild and the gardened, habitable space. She has companioned herself to poetry, and finds there the enduring invitation both through fragility and rest to inhabit these border spaces. She seeks those poems that wire together the open edge of language with a trust of the earth.
Mary Vanhoozer is a creative and engaging multi-instrumentalist (piano, violin, hurdy gurdy, and hammered dulcimer) and melodist. A classical pianist by trade, she has performed solo recitals and taught workshops throughout the United States. She is dedicated to the craft of live music and loves to organise concerts around themes, oftentimes lending a dramatic, almost narrative element to her performances. Mary released her debut album for solo piano, From Leipzig to LA, in 2018. Mary received her degrees in piano performance: her BM from Wheaton College Conservatory, her MM from the Eastman School of Music, and her DMA from the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Rev. Dr. Michael R. Wagenman is Senior Research Fellow and founding chair of the Scripture and Church Seminar at KLC. Michael completed his PhD at the University of Bristol on the nature of ecclesial power in the worldview of Abraham Kuyper. He studies and writes on issues related to power within the church’s engagement with culture and society, especially the use of Scripture and proclamation as forms of communication. He is chaplain to Western University (London, Ontario) and teaches part time at Redeemer University (New Testament Interpretation), the Institute for Christian Studies, and Huron University College’s faculty of theology.
Professor Steve Walton is Senior Research Fellow in New Testament at Trinity College, Bristol. He holds degrees from the Universities of Birmingham, Cambridge, and Sheffield. He has authored a number of books, most recently Reading Acts Theologically (T&T Clark, 2022), a collection of essays. He is working on the Word Biblical Commentary on Acts, which will appear in three volumes, the first, covering Acts 1–9 (hopefully) in 2024. He has taught in Nottingham, Cambridge, London and Bristol, and has supervised 16 PhD theses and two MTh theses to successful completion. He was elected as a member of the international Society for New Testament Studies in 2017, and co-chairs an SNTS seminar on ‘God in the New Testament’. He has served as a seminar chair and as Secretary of the British New Testament Society. Steve is a retired international volleyball referee, and lives in Loughborough with his wife Ali, an ordained Anglican minister, and their Border Terrier, Flora.
Genevieve studied Theology at King’s College London, before doing an MA in European Classical Acting at Drama Centre London. She formed her own production company, touring the acclaimed one-woman drama Asena against sex trafficking (BBC Radio Northampton). She worked for three years as Development Officer at KLICE, which has now become The Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge and of which she has recently become a Fellow. Alongside managing her father’s small business, in the last year she has been presenting for Radio Maria England, including Faith and Family in the Time of Covid-19, Questions of Faith, and co-producing and presenting Women Together, which is now entering its second series.
Daria has 20 years of experience in the fields of mental health counseling, social work, and peacebuilding. Her work has been focused on individuals who have experienced personal and communal, current and transgenerational trauma, understanding cultural and individual barriers to, and resources for resilience. In her research and approach, she uses restorative justice and peacebuilding frameworks integrated with mental health counseling theory and practice. The populations she has worked with are ethnic minorities in the Balkans; refugees; domestic violence and sexual assault survivors; immigrants; the homeless. Daria received the Women and Gender Studies Feminist Scholarship Award at James Madison University for her work with Bulgarian elderly women and the Outstanding Scholarship Award from the Department of Graduate Psychology at James Madison University for her dissertation research on joy and awe in four countries. Dr. White is a native of Bulgaria and since 2014 – an American citizen.
Andrew White holds a Ph.D. in English from Washington State University (2003) and has held faculty positions at Wheaton College, the American University in Bulgaria, and Eastern Mennonite University. His research interests include early American literature, early modern English literature, spiritual life writings, and Balkan studies. Andrew recently completed an M.Div. (biblical studies) and is seeking ordination in the Anglican Church in North America (Diocese of Christ Our Hope). He currently resides in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, but is a native of the “evergreen” Pacific Northwest.
Fr Dominic White is Acting Director of Research at the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, Cambridge. A Dominican friar and Catholic priest, he is assigned to the Priory of St. Michael at Blackfriars, Cambridge. He studied Classics at Pembroke College, Cambridge, followed by a PhD at Imperial College London, meeting the Dominicans as organist of their London church. His theological interests focus especially on theology of the arts, and the arts’ implications for metaphysics, liturgy and spirituality. He is the author of The Lost Knowledge of Christ: Christian Cosmology, Contemporary Spiritualities and the Arts (Liturgical Press, 2015), and How Do I Look? Theology in the Age of the Selfie (SCM, 2020). He is a composer, and co-founder of the Friends of Sophia group.
Matthew Wiley is a theologian and writer in Chicago. He is a PhD Student in systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and his research is on ecclesial disunity and pneumatology. He is the managing editor of Sapientia and the digital content manager for the Henry Center for Theological Understanding. Matt and his wife Ellyn belong to Boulevard Presbyterian Church, where they lead the youth ministry. He loves good coffee, Wendell Berry’s poetry, and theology for the sake of the local church.
After receiving an MA in Theology from McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Canada, Hal went on to earn a BA in philosophy from the University of Toronto and then went on to read for the BPhil at the University of Oxford. Hal’s philosophical work focuses on ancient and contemporary ethics, the relationship between ethics and literature, and the philosophy of economics and the nature and place of the humanities in our contemporary age. He and his wife Hannah live in the little village of Great Haseley, South Oxfordshire.
Rev Dr Chris Wright is Global Ambassador and Ministry Director of Langham Partnership (www.langham.org). After ordained ministry in Tonbridge, Kent, he taught the Old Testament in India for five years (1983-88) and then at All Nations Christian College in England, where he was also Principal from 1993-2001. In 2001 he took over the leadership of the Langham at the invitation of the founder, John Stott. Chris’s PhD (Cambridge) was in the field of O.T. economic ethics. His books include commentaries on Exodus, Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, Lamentations and Ezekiel, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God; The Mission of God; The God I Don’t Understand; and The Mission of God’s People. Chris and his wife Liz, who come from Belfast, have four adult children and eleven grandchildren, and live in London as members of All Souls Church, Langham Place, where Chris serves as an honorary curate. Chris enjoys a bit of light running, birdwatching occasionally, and following Ireland’s fortunes in the rugby Six Nations.
John is a doctor, author, speaker and research scientist. His background is as a consultant neonatologist and academic researcher focussing on the mechanisms, treatment and prevention of brain damage in newborn infants. He is now engaged in addressing new ethical, philosophical and theological challenges caused by advances in medical science and technology. He is also fascinated by the issues raised by rapid advances in AI and robotics, and the interface between cutting-edge science and Christian faith. John’s academic title is Emeritus Professor of Neonatal Paediatrics, Ethics & Perinatology at University College London. He is also a senior researcher at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, Cambridge. He worked as a paediatrician specialising in the care of newborn babies at a leading neonatal intensive care unit for more than 25 years. Through his clinical experience he became increasingly aware of the ethical maelstrom caused by advancing technology and contentious debates about the nature of humanity at the beginning and end of life. He has now retired from frontline medical practice and is focussing on the ethical, philosophical and theological issues raised by rapidly advancing technology.
Trevor Yoakum, PhD, DMin is the theological education consultant for West Africa with the International Mission Board, the missionary sending agency of the Southern Baptist Convention. He also serves on the faculty at the West Africa Baptist Advanced School of Theology (WABAST) in Lomé, Togo. Besides teaching and consulting work, Trevor writes theological education curricula as well as books and articles in various journals. Trevor lives in Lomé, Togo with his wife, Kimberly. They have four children.
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