YDS community is invited to a fireside chat between Dean Greg Sterling and Professor Joyce Mercer on Monday, February 6—part of a series of conversations this semester exploring faculty members’ faith narratives and their relationship to their academic work. The event will take place at 5:30 p.m. in the Common Room.
Greg Sterling is the Reverend Henry L. Slack Dean of Yale Divinity School and Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament. A New Testament scholar with a specialty in Hellenistic Judaism, he has concentrated his research on Josephus, Luke-Acts, and the writings of Philo of Alexandria, with a focus on the ways in which Second Temple Jews and early Christians interacted with one another and the Greco-Roman world.
Interviewing Sterling will be Joyce Mercer ’84 M.Div., Professor of Pastoral Care and Practical Theology. Mercer’s work focuses on practices of care in diverse contexts and situations, including post-conflict areas of southeast Asia, children in the consumer culture of the U.S., addictions in family systems, and the religious lives of adolescent girls.
Mercer joined the YDS faculty in 2016 after serving on the faculties of Virginia Theological Seminary, San Francisco Theological Seminary & The Graduate Theological Union, and Union Theological Seminary in the Philippines.
A program of the YDS Committee on Spiritual Formation and Faith Practices, the fireside chats are opportunities for members of the YDS community to get to know faculty members from the perspective of faith. The format of these events is a brief interview conducted with a professor by a member of the committee, followed by a time of open conversation, questions, and responses.