Adjunct and Visiting Faculty
In every semester, the School of Theology enjoys the presence of adjunct faculty who are typically local or visiting experts in various fields of study and practice and often seasoned pastors and priests. Adjunct faculty enrich our curriculum and bring new voices and perspectives to our community. The following is a list of adjunct faculty for spring 2010 and/or fall 2011. The adjunct office is located in Room 437 in the School of Theology.
Carl P. Daw Jr.
The Reverend Dr. Carl P. Daw Jr., is an Episcopal priest and writer who served as the Executive Director of The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada from 1996 to 2009, while this ecumenical and international organization had its headquarters at Boston University School of Theology. Dr. Daw continues as an Adjunct Professor of Hymnology in the Master of Sacred Music program and acts as the Curator of the Hymnological Collections in the STH Library.
In addition to his experience as a parish priest and university chaplain, Dr. Daw has served as a retreat leader, speaker, workshop leader, and guest lecturer at many conferences and seminaries throughout the United States. He has been successively Secretary and Chair of the Standing Commission on Church Music of the Episcopal Church and was a consultant member of the Text Committee for The Hymnal 1982, to which he contributed a number of translations, metrical paraphrases, and original hymns. His texts have subsequently appeared in most denominational and ecumenical hymnals published in the United States and Canada. They also can be found in hymnals in England, Scotland, and Australia and have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese. (In conjunction with his lecture tour of Japan in 2002, the United Church of Christ in Japan published a collection of 25 of his hymns in Japanese. ) Anthem settings of approximately seventy of his texts are currently in print. Hope Publishing Co. has issued four collections of his hymns: A Year of Grace: Hymns for the Church Year (1990), To Sing God’s Praise (1992), New Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1996), and Gathered for Worship (2006) . He was a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee for The Hymnal 1982 Companion and wrote the essay on “The Spirituality of Anglican Hymnody” in Volume I and numerous text commentaries in Volume III. In 1994 Church Hymnal Corporation published Breaking the Word: Essays on the Liturgical Dimensions of Preaching, for which he was the editor and contributor of two essays. He collaborated with Kevin R. Hackett, SSJE, in creating the two-volume A Hymntune Psalter, which Church Publishing, Inc. issued, 1998–1999, as well as the later Revised Common Lectionary version, 2007-2008. With Thomas Pavlechko he is compiling Liturgical Music for the Revised Common Lectionary (Church Publishing, Inc., 2007-2009), which provides scripture-based choir and congregational song suggestions for each Sunday of the three-year cycle. He has written a variety of articles related to liturgy and music and has reviewed related materials for The St. Luke’s Journal of Theology, The Anglican Theological Review, and The Hymn.
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Dr. Daw grew up in a succession of towns in Tennessee where his father was a Baptist pastor. He taught for eight years in the English Department of the College of William and Mary before entering seminary. Following his ordination, he served for three years as Assistant Rector of Christ and Grace Church in Petersburg, Virginia, and for nine years as Vicar-Chaplain of St. Mark’s Chapel at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. He then spent three years as a resident Companion of the Community of Celebration in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, and served in various interim and supply ministries in that area.
Rev. Dr. Chapin Garner
TC-808 The Sermon Studio
Dr. Garner has been Senior Pastor of United Church of Christ in Norwell, Massachusetts since 2000. He is a 1997 graduate of Boston University School of Theology where he majored in theology and drama. Chapin graduated with his Doctor of Ministry from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in 2006. From 1997 to 2000 he served as Associate Pastor of the Wellesley Congregational Church, where he worked primarily in youth ministry.
Chapin founded and leads the Christ Clarion Fellowship, a national gathering of young clergy that has been supported by the Louisville Institute. Chapin is a Director of LiberalEvangelical.org, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Alban Institute in Washington D.C. Chapin serves as a resident preacher at the Church at Point O’Woods on Fire Island in New York during the summer.
Chapin is also a religious playwright, having had plays produced regionally, in New York, and in Boston. His plays include Confessions, Taking Root, and An Opportune Time (Baker’s Plays, 1998/2000/2001). His books include Getting into Character: The Art of First-Person Narrative Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2008), as well as, Lost in the Middle? Claiming an Inclusive Faith for Christians Who Are Both Liberal and Evangelical and Found in the Middle! Theology and Ethics for Christians Who Are Both Liberal and Evangelical, co-authored with Dr. Wesley Wildman of Boston University, (The Alban Institute, 2009).
Meghan Henning
Meghan is a New Testament scholar with interests in the theme of suffering in antiquity, women in early Christianity, Petrine literature, historiography, philosophy, disability studies and feminist hermeneutics. Her dissertation on the pedagogical function of Hell in antiquity is entitled “Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth: The Pedagogical Function of Hell in Matthew and the Early Church.” This project focuses on the connections between the afterlife, ancient rhetoric, ethics and social formation. Meghan holds a BA in Religion and Economics from Denison University, and an MAR from Yale in Bible. Recently, she have taught as an adjunct faculty member at universities and colleges in the Boston area including Boston University, Lesley University and Emmanuel College. To see a complete list of her publications and recently delivered lectures and papers see http://emory.academia.edu/MeghanHenning.
Dr. Elizabeth Parsons
TM 858 Creating Resilience
Elizabeth Parsons is an educator and development professional with a background in non-profit administration that has included academic, community and faith-based, and artistic endeavors. Having lived and worked in Southern Africa, she teaches interdisciplinary courses in religion and development with special emphasis on worldview differences and meaning-making in postmodern societies. She is the author of What Price for Privatization? Cultural Encounter with Development Policy on the Zambian Copperbelt (Lexington Books, 2010).
Rodney L. Petersen
Rodney Petersen has been Executive Director of the Boston Theological Institute since moving to the Boston area from Switzerland in 1990. In addition to this work with the BTI, he teaches in both the member schools and overseas in the areas of history and ethics, currently focusing on issues of religion and conflict. Together with BTI colleagues these courses have taken students to various regions of the world in order to understand and film ways in which faith communities are implicated in regional violence and how they can be avenues of reconciliation. He is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., serving on several of their committees and served for seven years as the pastor of the Allston Congregational Church (U.C.C.).
Prior work included teaching at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Deerfield, Illinois), Webster University (Geneva, Switzerland), and with the Fédération des Institutions établies à Genève (FIIG). He also worked with churches in France and Eastern Europe, primarily Romania.
He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, the Massachusetts Commission on Christian Unity, the Lord’s Day Alliance of the USA, the Refugee Immigration Ministry, Sec/tres. American Society of Missiology (Eastern Fellowship), and numerous other academic and ecclesiastical organizations. He is author or editor (and co-editor) and contributor of several articles and scholarly works, including the books, Preaching in the Last Days (Oxford University Press, 1993); Christianity and Civil Society: Theological Education for Public Life (Orbis Books, 1995); Consumption, Population, and Sustainability: Perspectives from Science and Religion (Washington, D. C.: Island Press, 1999), with accompanying video, “Living in Nature.”; The Contentious Triangle: Church, State, and University. A Festschrift in Honor of Professor George H. Williams (Kirksville, MO: Truman University Press, 1999), Earth at Risk (Amherst: Humanity Books, 2000), Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Religion, Public Policy and Conflict Transformation (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2001, 2002), Theological Literacy for the 21st Century(Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002); and Antioch Agenda: Essays in Honor of Orlando E. Costas (ISPCK, 2007).
Dr. David Rupert
David Rupert, Psy.D., is the Director of Training at the Danielsen Institute, and a licensed psychologist in private practice in Salem, MA. He has a doctorate in clinical psychology and a master’s degree in theology from Fuller Seminary. Dr. Rupert has been in full-time clinical practice in California and Boston since 1996. His areas of interest and specialization are relational approaches to psychotherapy, addressing spiritual and existential issues in therapy, couple’s therapy, and the training/development of psychotherapists.
Dr. M. Thomas Thangaraj
TT837 Doing Theology in a Global Context (Fall 2012)
TT840 Images of Christ in World Christianity (Fall 2012)
Dr. M. Thomas Thangaraj retired in 2008 as Professor Emeritus of World Christianity at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University, after 20 years of service. His area of research during his doctoral studies was in the area of relation between Saiva Siddhanta (South Indian Hindu philosophical tradition) and Christianity, especially around the concept of guru. He has been actively involved in programs of inter-religious dialogue both at the national and international level.
He has published widely both in English and in Tamil, and his most recent publications are: The Crucified Guru: An Experiment in Cross-Cultural Christology (Abingdon Press, 1994), Relating to People of Other Religions: What Every Christian Needs to Know (Abingdon Press, 1997, and The Common Task: A Theology of Christian Mission (Abingdon Press, 1999). Co-edited with Anantanand Rambachan and Rashied Omar, Hermeneutical Explorations in Dialogue: Essays in Honor of Hans Ucko (Delhi,ISPCK, 2007). He is currently working on a popular book, tentatively titled as, Negotiating Diversity: Crossing Boundaries as a Spiritual Practice.
Apart from his academic interests, Professor Thangaraj is keenly interested in South Indian music, both classical and popular, and also in the art of hymnody in Tamil. Twenty of his hymns are now incorporated in the official hymnbook of the churches in Tamilnadu. A few of his hymns in English are published in the United States, Sweden, Germany, Norway, and Denmark. He served on the Assembly Worship Planning Committee for the Assembly of the World Council of Churches held in Zimbabwe, Africa in 1998.