Senior faculty members slated to deliver talks at Convocation and Reunions

Talks by three senior members of the YDS faculty will be among the highlights of Convocation and Reunions 2012.  Kathryn Tanner, the Frederick Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology, will speak on the topic “Why Christians Should Support the Occupy Movement.”  Professor of Hebrew Scriptures Carolyn Sharp will speak about “Prophetic Witness And Public Leadership: Challenges and Opportunities.”  And Lamin Sanneh, the D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity,” will address the subject “The Last Great Frontier in a Post-9/11 World:  Lessons of World Christianity.”

SannehSanneh is the author of several books and more than two hundred articles on religious and historical subjects.  Among his books are Abolitionists Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of Modern West Africa, The Crown and the Turban: Muslims and West African Pluralism, Religion and the Variety of Culture: A Study in Origin and Practice, Piety and Power: Muslims and Christians in West Africa, Whose Religion is Christianity?: The Gospel beyond the West, and Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity.  He is editor of the Oxford Studies in World Christianity series and coeditor of The Changing Face of Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2005).

Forthcoming from Sanneh is “The Oxford Handbook on African Christianity” and he is also finishing a book, “Islam and Society in West Africa: The Pacifist Achievement,” for Harvard University Press.

Sanneh has served as chair of Yale’s Council on African Studies and is an editor-at-large for The Christian Century and a contributing editor of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research.

He was appointed by Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences and by Pope Benedict XVI to the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with Muslims.  Read a feature article about Sanneh here.

Carolyn J. Sharp, professor of Hebrew Scriptures and interim associate dean of academic affairs in 2012–2013, focuses her research on aspects of the composition and theology of Hebrew Scripture texts. In recent articles, she has analyzed the rhetoric of Hosea with reference to the contemporary homiletical aesthetic of Jeremiah Wright and urged the creation of a multivocal Old Testament theology grounded in the notion of diaspora identity.

Sharp

Her books include Prophecy and Ideology in Jeremiah, Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible, Old Testament Prophets for Today, and Wrestling the Word: The Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Believer.  Most recently, she edited the book Disruptive Grace: Reflections on God, Scripture, and the Church by Walter Brueggemann. Her current projects include a commentary on Joshua and a commentary on Jeremiah 26-52.  She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Biblical Literature and cochairs the Writing/Reading Jeremiah group of the Society of Biblical Literature. An Episcopal priest, she serves two parishes in New Haven and leads parish study groups on biblical theology. Read a feature article about Sharp here.

TajnnerKathryn E. Tanner, the Frederick Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology, joined the Yale Divinity School faculty in 2010 after teaching at the University of Chicago Divinity School for 16 years and in Yale’s Department of Religious Studies for 10. Her research relates the history of Christian thought to contemporary issues of theological concern using social, cultural, and feminist theory.

Among her books are The Politics of God: Christian Theologies and Social Justice, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology, and Economy of Grace.  She has written scores of scholarly articles and chapters in books that include The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, which she co-edited. She serves on the editorial boards of Modern Theology, International Journal of Systematic Theology, and Scottish Journal of Theology, and is a former coeditor of the Journal of Religion.

Tanner is a past president of the American Theological Society and for eight years has been a member of the Theology Committee that advises the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops. In the academic year 2010–11, she had a Luce Fellowship to research financial markets and the critical perspectives that Christian theology can bring to bear on them. In 2015–16, she will deliver the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Read a feature article about Tanner here.

August 2, 2012
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