Yale Divinity School Dean Greg Sterling announced the following faculty appointments for the 2019-2020 academic year:
Anthea Butler, a University of Pennsylvania professor who is a frequent media commentator and opinion-column writer on politics, religion, and race, will spend the year at YDS to complete her next major monograph, Reading Race: Hope, Religion Education, and Interracial Cooperation (1880-1917).Gabrielle Thomas
Gabrielle Thomas will join the faculty on a three-year appointment as Lecturer in Early Christian and Anglican Studies.
Thomas is currently a postdoctoral research associate at Durham University, UK, and an ordained Anglican priest who serves as a Minor Canon in Durham Cathedral. She is the author of the forthcoming book The Image of God in the Theology of Gregory of Nazianzus (Cambridge, 2019) and has written articles for the Scottish Journal of Theology, Exchange, and Studia Patristica, as well as chapters for edited collections and articles for the popular Christian press. Her current research explores the role of “powers of opposition” in early Christian soteriology and human suffering.
In her work as an Anglican priest, Thomas has been leading a research project using ecumenical focus groups to explore women’s experiences working in UK churches. She also serves on the theological advisory group to the Archbishop of Canterbury, which meets at Lambeth Palace.
Abdul-Rehman Malik
Abdul-Rehman Malik has accepted a one-year appointment as Lecturer in Islamic Studies.
Malik has distinguished himself as an award-winning journalist, civil society leader, and cultural organizer working at the intersection of faith, culture, and social justice. He has played several roles at Yale in recent years. He currently serves as Director of the Social Justice Leadership Lab at Dwight Hall’s Center for Public Service and Social Justice, Mentor-in-Residence at the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking, and Postgraduate Associate and Outreach Coordinator for the Council on Middle East Studies at Yale’s MacMillan Center for International and Areas Studies. He has also co-taught a “Shakespeare & Religion” graduate seminar and trained as a member of the 2017 Class of Yale’s Greenberg World Fellows.
John Azumah
John Azumah comes to YDS as Visiting Professor of World Christianity for next year. Azuman is stepping down as Professor of World Christianity and Islam and Director of International Programs at Columbia Theological Seminary to set up the Lamin Sanneh Institute at the University of Ghana, which he will continue to pursue while teaching at Yale.
Born in Ghana, Azumah earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Birmingham, UK. He taught at universities in India, Ghana, South Africa, and the United States, in addition to directing the Centre for Islamic Studies in London, before joining the Columbia faculty in 2011.
Like Lamin Sanneh, Azumah specializes in Islam, Christian-Muslim relations, Christian theology of religions, missions and missiology, and world Christianity and Islam in the Global South. Among his numerous publications, he is co-editor of Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, Vol. 7 (Brill, 2017) and, with Sanneh, co-editor of The African Christian and Islam (Langham, 2013).
In addition to his academic career, John is a Minister-In-Charge for the Presbyterian Church in both Ghana and Atlanta and has served in numerous other church leadership roles in Ghana and London.