Contributing Authors

 

 

Carmelo Alvarez (Ph.D., Free University of Amsterdam) is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).  He and his wife, Raquel Rodriguez, have served as missionaries in Mexico, Costa Rica, and Chile.  Between 1975 and 1982, Alvarez was Professor of Church History and President of the Latin American Biblical Seminary in San Jose, Costa Rica .  Always a leader in the ecumenical movement, he has worked for the Latin American Council of Churches (1984-1986) and has been Executive Director of the Ecumenical Research Department (1987-1992).  He also is a member of the World Council of Churches and General Secretary and Treasurer of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT).  Since 1992, he has taught church history and theology at Christian Theological Seminary. 

 

Paul Blowers (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame) has taught on the faculty of Emmanuel School of Religion since 1989.  Trained as a scholar of Byzantine Christianity, he has particular interests in the history of biblical interpretation and in the spiritual traditions of the Eastern Churches.  His research and publication in the history of the Stone-Campbell Movement includes most recently the Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement and Founding Vocation and Future Vision: The Self-Understanding of Disciples of Christ and Churches of Christ (Chalice, 1999) with Richard Hughes and Anthony Dunnavant.  In addition to these major publications, he is the author of four other books and over thirty journal articles.  He is a member of the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ.

 

Lawrence A. Q. Burnley (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania ) is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and currently serves as the Associate Dean for Multicultural Programs and Special Assistant to the Provost at Messiah College.  Prior to going to Messiah, he was the Executive for the Office of Racial Ethnic Relations for the Global Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ. Because his work has focused on cross-cultural dialogue and ministry in a global context, he has traveled extensively abroad, conducting seminars and workshops.  He is the author of The Education of African Americans in the U.S., 1865-1914: The Case of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) (Mercer, 2008).  He is married to Naima Quarles-Burnley, and is the father of two sons: Rashad (deceased) and Thulani.

 

Doug Foster (Ph.D., Vanderbilt) is Associate Dean and Professor of Church History at the Graduate School of Theology of Abilene Christian University .  In addition to his teaching and administrative responsibilities, he is also the Director of the Center for Restoration Studies at the University.  His scholarly work concentrates on the place of the Stone-Campbell Movement in American Christianity and the nature of the idea of Christian unity.  In addition to his work as an editor of the Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, he has served most recently as the Series Editor for the Heart of the Restoration books, and has co-authored two of them:  Crux of the Matter: Crisis, Tradition and the Future of Churches of Christ (AC Press, 2002) and Seeking a Lasting City: The Church's Journey in the Story of God (ACU PRess, 2005). 

 

Stanley Granberg (Ph.D., Open University, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies) served for ten years as a missionary in Meru, Kenya (1983-1993).  Since then he has taught at both Lubbock Christian University (1993-1996) and Cascade College in Portland, Oregon (1996-2005) in the field of Bible and missions.  Currently, he is the director of Kairos Church Planting Support, an organization that helps recruit, equip, and support church planters in the Churches of Christ and Christian Churches/Churches of Christ.  He also is on the faculty of Harding University Graduate School of Religion in Memphis , Tennesee, where he teaches church planting, global evangelism, missionary anthropology, and ethnotheology.  He has edited One Hundred Years of African Missions: Essays in Honor of Wendell Broom (ACU Press, 2001).  He and his wife Gena live in Vancouver, Washington.

 

John Mark Hicks (Ph.D., Westminster Theological Seminary) is Professor of Theology at Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN , where he has served since 2000. Ordained in the Churches of Christ, he has held a number of education ministry positions in churches throughout Tennessee.  He has authored seven books for both scholarly and popular audiences. The most recent of these are Come to the Table: Revisioning the Lord's Supper (Leaf Press, 2002) and Kingdom Come: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb and James A. Harding (Leafwood Publishers, 2006).  He maintains an interactive website that chronicles his work in the academy and the church: http://johnmarkhicks.faithsite.com. He has two grown children and a granddaughter and lives in Nashville with his wife and her children.

 

Loretta Long Hunnicutt (Ph.D., Georgetown University) has been Associate Professor of History at her alma mater, Pepperdine University , since 2002.  Her teaching and research focuses mainly on colonial and early national American history, especially the history of women during these periods.  She is the author of The Life of Selina Campbell: A Fellow Soldier in the Cause of Restoration (University of Alabama Press , 2001) and several other publications.  She is an active member of  Alpha Phi Theta Honorary, the Southern Association of Women Historians, and Disciples of Christ Historical Society.  She attends Conejo Valley Church of Christ in Thousand Oaks, California , along with her husband Dwayne and new daughter Alyssa. 

 

Timothy Lee (Ph.D., University of Chicago) joined the faculty of Brite Divinity School as Assistant Professor of Church History and Director of Asian Church Studies in 2002.  Prior to going to TCU, he taught at the University of Chicago in its Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles.  His current research focuses on the history of Christianity in Korea and among Korean Americans, a topic about which he has written a number of articles and coedited a volume with Robert Buswell: Christianity in Korea (University of Hawaii Press, 2006). Tim is an ordained minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and has served as moderator of North American Pacific Asian Disciples (NAPAD). He is married to Yeahwa and with her has two children, Joseph and Esther.

 

Edward Robinson (Ph.D., Mississippi State University) has served on the faculty of Abilene Christian University since 2002.   In addition to teaching foundational courses on the Bible, he also teaches courses in American religious history and the history of African American Christianity.  An ordained minister in the Churches of Christ, he has preached in Texas, Mississippi , and Illinois since 1984.   The author of several articles and entries in reference works, most recently he has published To Save My Race from Abuse: A Life of Samuel Robert Cassius (University of Alabama Press , 2007).  He is also working with the University of Tennessee Press to produce an edited volume of the writings of this pioneer African American leader of the Churches of Christ.  Edward and his wife Toni have three children: Clarice, Ashley, and Erika. 

 

Scott Seay (Ph.D., Vanderbilt) joined the faculty of Christian Theological Seminary in 2005 as Assistant Professor of Church History.  As a specialist in American religious history, his scholarly work has focused primarily on the colonial and early national New England religion and culture.  He is the author of one book, Hanging Between Heaven and Earth: Capital Crime, Execution Preaching, and the Shape of Theology in New England (Northern Illinois University Press, 2009). Though he was raised in the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, he now is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and has served a number of churches as an educator, consultant, and interim minister.

 

David Thompson (Ph.D., University of Cambridge) is a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College and Reader in Modern Church History, University of Cambridge, UK .  His teaching and research interests include the history of the Ecumenical Movement and the social thought of churches in 19th and 20th century Europe .  He is also Director of the Centre for Advanced Religious and Theological Studies at Cambridge , where he oversees graduate degree programs in world Christianity.  An ordained minister of the United Reformed Church (which the Re-formed Association of Churches of Christ in Great Britain joined in 1981), he has authored Let Sects and Parties Fall: A Short History of the Association of Churches of Christ in Great Britain (Berean Press, 1980).  More recent publications include the chapters "Ecumenism," "Popular Religion," and "Christian Social Thought" in the Cambridge History of Christianity vols. 8 and 9 (2006) and Baptism, Church, and Society in Modern Britain (Paternoster, 2005).

 

Mark Toulouse (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Professor of American Religious History at Brite Divinity School . He is the author of numerous articles and books. An ordained minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), he regularly conducts workshops for ministers and lay people on topics in American Christianity, Disciples history and theology, and theological education. Toulouse was named a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology for 1997-1998. In 2006, he completed an analysis of the relationship between Christian faith and American public life published by Westminster John Knox under the title God in Public. He and Jeffica, married for thirty years, are parents to three adult children. Besides his research interests in the areas of theology and history, he has, on one notable occasion, been published as a sports photographer.

 

Newell Williams (Ph.D., Vanderbilt) has been President and Professor of Modern and American Church History of Brite Divinity School since 2003.  Prior to going to Brite, he taught for 19 years at Christian Theological Seminary, also serving for a time as Vice President and Academic Dean.  He is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and an active member in many denominational groups, including the Association of Disciples for Theological Discussion and the Stone-Campbell Dialogue.  He is the author of over thirty published articles and five books.  The most recent of those books are The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (Eedrmans, 2004), which he edited with Paul Blowers, Doug Foster, and Anthony Dunnavant; and Barton Stone: A Spiritual Biography (Chalice, 2000).

 

Glenn Zuber (Ph.D., Indiana University) is an ordained minister in the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ, having worked with in North Carolina and Maryland.  He has taught courses in American studies, history, and theology at Indiana University, Manhattan College , and Fordham University .  His teaching and research interests include 20th-century American history, race relations, revivalism, and women's leadership in the Stone-Campbell Movement.  The author of scholarly articles and entries in reference works, he currently is revising his dissertation for publication: "Onward Christian Klansmen: War, Religion, and the Rise of the Main Street Ku Klux Klan, 1915-1930."  He and his family live in Silver Springs, Maryland, where they attend Journey's Crossing Church.