Faculty Member, Theology Department
Center and Library for the Bible and Social Justice, ...
About
Ph.D. University of Sheffield
M.Div. Trinity College, University of Toronto
B.A. Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota
My primary research interests center on economic exploitation in the Hebrew Bible and how biblical texts are received and used in cultures and societies.
During my Ph.D. studies, I developed a cultural-evolutionary model that I used to interpret prophetic complaints against economic exploitation through the lens of recurring societal patterns, which are evidenced both during Judah’s entrance into Assyria’s trade nexus and in corporate globalization's negative effects on agrarian communities. My findings have been published in my first book, Re-Reading the Prophets Through Corporate Globalization: A Cultural-Evolutionary Approach to Economic Injustice in the Hebrew Bible (Gorgias, 2010).
My second book, Bible and Justice: Ancient Texts, Modern Challenges (Equinox Publishing, 2011), is an edited volume that is the result of a conference that I organized and directed: The 2008 Conference on Bible and Justice at the University of Sheffield. The conference also resulted in a special edition of Political Theology (vol. 11, no. 3, 2010), which I also edited.
In addition to pursuing further research the cultural-evolutionary model that I developed, I am exploring how the cultural environments into which biblical texts are received influence both people’s use and interpretation of these texts. In this vein, I am currently co-authoring a book on the Bible in film with Mark Brummitt of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School and a textbook on the Bible in culture and society with David Chalcraft of the University of Derby. My paper, "Searching for the Promised Land: The Evolution of the Exodus Narrative in African-American Communities, from Abolition to Civil Rights" has also been selected to be published in an edited volume.
