Jeremy Begbie published “Learning from Teaching: Theological Education in the Light of James Torrance,” in the online journal Participatio (vol. 5, 2014); “Negotiating Musical Transcendence,” in Music and Transcendence, edited by Férdia Stone-Davis (Ashgate); and “Modelling Harmony: Music in Peace-Building,” in Mediating Peace: Reconciliation through Art, Music & Film (Routledge). He delivered “A Quest for the Timeless? The Arts, Spirituality, and Faith” as the Deere Lecture at Golden Gate Seminary in September and gave a distinguished lecture and piano performance of “At the Still Point” (composed by Christopher Theofanidis) at the University of Hong Kong in August. In May he taught a weeklong course, “Fostering a Scriptural Imagination for the Arts,” at Regent College in Vancouver.
Kate Bowler appeared on C-Span’s Book TV to discuss her book, Blessed (Oxford University Press). She presented the paper “Counting Change: The Inner Economies of the American Prosperity Gospel” for the symposium “Love in a Time of Capital: Relationality and Commodification as Subjects of Religion” held May 8 at Yale University. In May she taught “God, Money, and the Rise of the Prosperity Gospel” as part of the summer program at Regent College in Vancouver.
Luke Bretherton spoke in April at the “Christianity and Capitalism” conference held at Harvard Divinity School. He delivered two papers: “A Preferential Option for the Poor or the People? Theological Reflections on Poverty, Power, and Privilege” at the “Climate, Consumption, and the Common Good” symposium at King’s College London in May, and “Interfaith Relations and Democratic Innovation in Contemporary Britain: the Case of Community Organizing” at the “Democratic Innovation in Britain” colloquium in September at the Center for British Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
Christine Parton Burkett delivered several lectures: “The Word Embodied,” for the Institute of Preaching sponsored by Leadership Education at Duke Divinity in September; “Preaching off the Path,” for a preaching course in the Summer Course of Study in July; “Clarity in Communication: Reducing the Chaff That Clouds the Message,” the keynote address for the Clergy Excellence Seminar, Fellowship of Local Pastors and Associate Members of the Virginia Conference of the UMC, in Richmond in May; and “Language off the Leash: The Word Let Loose in the World,” for the Institute of Preaching held at St. Simons Island, Ga., in April.
Charles Campbell led two workshops at the North Carolina Bread for the World conference in Greensboro in April, participated that same month in a panel discussion of the film Slavery by Another Name at the Durham County Library, taught a weeklong course in Uppsala for the Swedish Preaching Program, and lectured at the University of Leipzig in Germany.
Douglas Campbell was promoted to professor of New Testament in July. He published four chapters and 11 responses to assessments of his book The Deliverance of God in the volume Beyond Old and New Perspectives on Paul: Reflections on the Work of Douglas Campbell, edited by Chris Tilling (Cascade).
Mark Chaves published “Family Formation and Religious Service Attendance: Untangling Marital and Parental Effects,” with Cyrus Schleifer, in Sociological Methods & Research (44.1, 2014). He delivered the invited lecture “Continuity and Change in American Religion” on Feb. 8 for the winter retreat of the Congregation at Duke Chapel in Durham, N.C., and met Aug. 27 with the Church of the Nazarene’s Board of General Superintendents to discuss trends in American religion.
Jeff Conklin-Miller presented “Improvisation in Christian Leadership” for Foundations for Christian Leadership sponsored by Leadership Education at Duke Divinity and “Innovations in Online/Hybrid Approaches to Theological Education” to the Board of Ordained Ministry of the Western North Carolina Annual Conference, both in May. He also taught the course “Service: Mission and Evangelism” for the Licensing School for Local Pastors in the North Carolina Annual Conference. In June he presented “Wesleyan Formation and Methodist Missional Contextualization” at the Summer Wesley Seminar of the Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition at Duke Divinity School, and “The Necessity of Formation for Contextualization between Church and World” to the Theology, Ecclesiology, and Mission section of the American Society of Missiology meeting held at Northwestern College in Minneapolis, Minn.
Farr Curlin delivered the keynote address to the 4th European Conference on Religion, Spirituality, and Health held May 22–24 in Malta. He published “Directive Counsel and Morally Controversial Medical Decision-Making: Findings from Two National Surveys of Primary Care Physicians,” with M. S. Putman, J. D. Yoon, and K. A. Rasinski, in the Journal of General Internal Medicine (29.2, 2014), and “Associations between Religion-Related Factors and Breast Cancer Screening among American Muslims,” with A. I. Padela, S. Murrar, B. Adviento, C. Liao, Z. Hosseinian, and M. Peek, in the Journal of Immigrant Minority Health (April 2014).
Craig Dykstra presented “Cultivating Communities of Faith: The Promise of Strategic Religious Philanthropy” as the Thomas H. Lake Lecture at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy on March 27. He published “Way to Live: Reflections on Dorothy Bass’s Contributions to the Practice of Christian Faith and Life,” in The Cresset (77.5, 2014), a publication of Valparaiso University.
Mary McClintock Fulkerson became a member of the leadership team for the 2015–16 Wabash Center Workshop for Pre-Tenure Theological School Faculty, program director for the International Association of Practical Theology steering committee, and a member of the Presbytery of New Hope’s examination committee. She wrote the foreword to Edward Farley’s memoir, Thinking about Things and Other Frivolities: A Life (Cascade), and on Sept. 29 moderated and spoke on a panel honoring the work of the late Duke Divinity professor Frederick Herzog, one of the school’s first liberation theologians.
Jennie Grillo gave a paper outlining her new book project on the Additions to Daniel in the history of interpretation at a colloquium for the 2014 winners of the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise held May 22–27 in Heidelberg, Germany. In July she presented the paper “Showing Seeing in the Tale of Susanna” at the National Humanities Center seminar “Scenes from the History of the Image” held at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Her essay “Qohelet’s Israel in Jerome’s Commentarius in Ecclesiasten” was published in Reading Ecclesiastes Intertextually, edited by Katharine Dell and Will Kynes (T&T Clark).
L. Gregory Jones, Bishop Ken Carter, and Susan Pendleton Jones published two more essays in their Disruptive Innovation and Mainline Protestantism series for Faith & Leadership: “When Disruption Comes to Church” (April 22) and “Disrupting Mainline Protestantism through the Digital Revolution” (May 20). L. Gregory Jones wrote “Easter Vocation: I Have Seen the Lord” for the Washington Institute’s website in April and gave the Owen Lenten Lectures (April 15–17) at Lovers Lane UMC in Dallas, Texas. On May 3 he delivered the commencement address at North Carolina Wesleyan College, which awarded him an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree, and on May 15 he served as facilitator for the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics Roundtable in New York City. He and Susan Pendleton Jones co-led an “Empowering Laity” event for the Mississippi Annual Conference of the UMC on April 26.
Joel Kaminsky published, with co-editors Joel N. Lohr and Mark Reasoner, The Abingdon Introduction to the Bible: Understanding Jewish and Christian Scriptures. He lectured at the University of British Columbia on the topic “Does the Bible Promote Violence?” on March 20 and presented the paper “Would You Impugn My Justice? Overlooked Nuances in the Hebrew Bible’s Theology of Divine Reward and Punishment” at the University of Cambridge on May 14.
Richard Lischer wrote the essay “Life after King” for The Christian Century and published Reading the Parables, a supplementary volume in the Westminster John Knox Interpretation commentary series. He preached the Divinity School baccalaureate sermon, “Having This Ministry” (based on 2 Corinthians 4:1); served as featured presenter for “Leading from the Soul,” a Divinity School working group focused on the integration of faith and secular callings; and lectured on “The Priority of Hope” at the Elevating Preaching Conference sponsored and hosted by the Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School on Sept. 22.
Randy Maddox published “John Wesley’s Earliest Published Defense of the Emerging Revival in Bristol,” in Wesley and Methodist Studies (vol. 6, 2014). He presented the plenary lecture “‘Christ Crucified’: Charles Wesley’s Passion” to the Wesleyan Theological Society in March and “John Wesley’s Passion for Holistic Salvation: A Precedent for Adventists?” as the Dalton Baldwin Memorial Lecture at Loma Linda University in May.
David Marshall published, with co-editor Lucinda Mosher, Death, Resurrection, and Human Destiny: Christian and Muslim Perspectives (Georgetown University Press). He facilitated the 13th annual Building Bridges seminar for Muslim and Christian scholars on the theme “Sin, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation,” at Georgetown University in April, and co-taught a course on Islam and Christian-Muslim relations at St Stephen’s House (a Church of England seminary) in Oxford in June.
Thomas Pfau’s book Minding the Modern: Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions, and Responsible Knowledge (University of Notre Dame Press) has been the subject of symposia at several universities, including the University of Virginia in February, the University of Notre Dame in April, and Northwestern University in June. He convened an interdisciplinary symposium at Duke University Sept. 25–26 devoted to the concept of action.
Russell Richey published “Episkopé and Connexionalism: Ecclesiology and Church Government in Methodism,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to World Methodism, edited by William Gibson, Peter Forsaith, and Martin Wellings; “Early American Methodism,” in The Cambridge Companion to American Methodism, edited by Jason E. Vickers; and “American Methodism: A Compact History, Denominational History, and an Author’s Response,” in Methodist History (52.2, 2014).
Lester Ruth published “Divine, Human, or Devilish: The State of the Question on the Writing of the History of Contemporary Worship,” in the journal Worship. He presented “Loving God Intimately: The Worship History of the Anaheim Vineyard, 1977–1983” at the Society of Vineyard Scholars in Columbus, Ohio, on April 5; delivered the plenary address “True Liturgy as the Liberation of Worship Leaders” at two National Worship Leader Conferences (May 13 in Centreville, Va., and July 16 in Kansas City, Kan.) sponsored by Worship Leader Magazine; and participated in the May 20–22 consultation on pop/rock worship at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich.
McKennon Shea and Kori Robins presented the workshop “Improvising in the Workplace: Adapting the Practices of Improv to Better Serve Your Students” in Orlando, Fla., on April 9 at the 2014 Student Personnel Administrators’ Conference hosted by the Association of Theological Schools.
Beth Sheppard presented “The Final Frontier: Events and Hospitality in the Theological Library Context” with Shaneë Murrain and “Grant Assessment, Management, and Reporting: Lessons Learned from the Religion in North Carolina Grant Project” with Phu Nguyen and Elizabeth DeBold at the American Theological Library Association meeting held June 17–21 in New Orleans, La.
Ross Wagner published a profile on the work of Richard Hays in Catalyst: Contemporary Evangelical Perspectives for United Methodist Seminarians. He was the Bible study leader for the West Coast Presbyterian Pastor’s Conference in Mount Hermon, Calif., from April 28–May 2, and on May 27 he joined three other clergy to lead a Bible study for the North Carolina legislature, focusing on the teachings of Jesus and social justice. He delivered the final paper of the seminar on The Reception of Scripture in Paul and Pauline Tradition at the International Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in Vienna on July 9, and presented the paper, “Old Greek Isaiah and the Struggle for Jewish Identity,” at a colloquium on the Septuagint held at the Kirchliche Hochschule in Wuppertal (Germany) on July 26. He preached the annual revival at Pleasant Grove UMC in Hillsborough, N.C., August 3–5.
Laceye Warner published The Method of Our Mission: United Methodist Polity and Organization (Abingdon Press). She spoke to the Youth Worker Connection of the Texas Annual Conference of the UMC on May 27 and taught “Our Mission from God: Evangelism” for the Summer Course of Study in July.
Will Willimon completed his term as interim pastor of Duke Memorial United Methodist Church in Durham, N.C., in July. In May he presented lectures at the Northwest Festival of Preaching in Seattle, Wash., and at the Festival of Homiletics in Minneapolis, Minn. With Stanley Hauerwas, he participated in the conference “Resident Aliens at Twenty-Five” at Wycliffe College in Toronto. The book was reissued with a new preface and afterword in April. He published “Eugene Peterson on Institutions,” in Pastoral Work: Engagements with the Vision of Eugene Peterson, edited by Jason Byassee and L. Roger Owens (Cascade), and contributed four book reviews to The Christian Century between February and April. He delivered the MacLeod Lectures at Princeton Seminary in October, and in July and August lectured and taught at Fuller Theological Seminary and taught at Vancouver School of Theology.
Brittany Wilson published “‘Neither Male nor Female’: The Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8.26–40,” in New Testament Studies (60.3, 2014); “The Blinding of Paul and the Power of God: Masculinity, Sight, and Self-Control in Acts 9,” in the Journal of Biblical Literature (133.2, 2014); and “Rereading Romans 1–3 Apocalyptically: A Response to Douglas Campbell’s ‘Rereading Romans 1–3’,” in Beyond Old and New Perspectives on Paul: Reflections on the Work of Douglas Campbell, edited by Chris Tilling (Cascade).
Norman Wirzba presented “Food and Faith: A Matter of Health and Wholeness” in Nashville, Tenn., at St George’s Episcopal Church in May, an event co-sponsored by Christ Church Cathedral and Siloam Family Health Center. In June he presented “From Nature to Creation: Seeing God’s World” at the Colossian Forum consultation on theology, evolution, and the Fall, and taught a weeklong intensive course, “Food, Farming, and Faith,” at Canadian Mennonite University’s Canadian School of Peacebuilding. In July he presented “The Meaning of Creation” at the Ekklesia Gathering in Chicago, Ill. In September he gave several addresses in the Boston area for the Cambridge Roundtable and at Gordon College, delivered a series of lectures on “The Human as Creature” at the King’s University College in Edmonton, Alberta, and spoke in Asheville, N.C., to young pastors in the Western North Carolina Conference of the UMC on the importance of the Sabbath.