Kamilah Hall Sharp

Professor Hall Sharp enjoys examining the intersection of race, gender, and class with the biblical text and contemporary culture using a trauma-informed womanist approach. She is currently working on her manuscript examining survival in the book of Esther. Her experience in church planting, pastoring, and community organizing has shaped her interest in womanist ecclesiology, womanist leadership, and the dynamics of thriving in public ministry, which are also areas of her research interest. She is an ordained minister in the Disciples of Christ (Christian Church) and currently serves as a Co-Pastor at The Gathering, A Womanist Church.

Brad R. Braxton

Dr. Brad R. Braxton is President and Professor of Public Theology at Chicago Theological Seminary. He is a seasoned biblical scholar and homiletician (i.e., an expert in the arts of sermon creation, delivery, and evaluation). He has held professorships at Southern Methodist University, Vanderbilt University, and Wake Forest University, as well as lectureships at Georgetown University, Harvard Divinity School, and McCormick Theological Seminary. In addition to his work in biblical studies and homiletics, his scholarship and teaching are conversant with other disciplines, including African American studies, interreligious studies, womanist, feminist, and LGBTQ+ studies, and postcolonial studies.

Dr. Braxton is the author of five books exploring the intersection of religion, cultural identity, and social justice, including two books appearing in 2023: A Master Class on Being Human: A Black Christian and A Black Secular Humanist on Religion, Race, and Justice (co-authored with the noted secular humanist Dr. Anthony Pinn) and Open: Unorthodox Thoughts on God and Community. Dr. Braxton’s books No Longer Slaves: Galatians and African American Experience and Preaching Paul are frequently used in divinity school and seminary courses.

As a testament to Dr. Braxton’s expertise in interreligious engagement, the Smithsonian Institution selected him in 2020 as the Senior Program Advisor for the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The Smithsonian Institution hosted in the summer of 2023 a multifaceted program on the National Mall in Washington, DC, which examined the diverse tapestry of religious communities and experiences in the United States. The two-week event drew substantial crowds to the National Mall and to the online resources affiliated with the festival. Dr. Braxton conceptualized major themes for the program and wrote a successful grant proposal to the Lilly Endowment, which received $1.5 million to support the festival.

Dr. Braxton is an ordained Baptist minister and a highly sought-after lecturer and preacher. In 2007, he preached at Westminster Abbey in London, England. His Westminster Abbey sermon on justice and non-violence was part of the bicentennial commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. He has also preached and lectured in Benin, Canada, Ghana, and South Africa. Furthermore, he is the Founding Senior Pastor of The Open Church, an inclusive congregation in Baltimore, Maryland committed to social activism, LGBTQ+ equality, and interfaith collaboration.

Kameelah Mu’Min Oseguera

Dr. Kameelah Mu’Min Oseguera is the Founder and President of Muslim Wellness Foundation (MWF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting healing and emotional well-being in the American Muslim community through dialogue, education and training. Through Muslim Wellness Foundation, Dr. Rashad has established the annual Black Muslim Psychology Conference and the Deeply Rooted Emerging Leaders (DREL) Fellowship for Black Muslim young adults.  Dr. Mu’Min Oseguera is also the founding co-Director of the National Black Muslim COVID Coalition, an initiative launched in collaboration with Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative to address the need for effective planning, preparedness and organizing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Mu’Min Oseguera’s clinical and research areas of interest include: religion, race and identity development, spirituality in psychotherapy, first generation college students and emerging adults of color; healing justice and faith based activism, racial trauma and healing, psychological impact of anti-Muslim bigotry and anti-Blackness, Black Muslim psychology and Black Muslim intersectional invisibility. Dr. Mu’Min Oseguera graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Psychology and MEd in Psychological Services. She obtained further graduate education, earning a second Masters in Restorative Practices & Youth Counseling (MRP) from the International Institute for Restorative Practices. She completed her doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, PA.

Dr Mu’Min Oseguera describes herself most simply as a Mama, Auntie, sister and friend; A psychologist, family historian, genealogist, baker and bean pie evangelist. She reflects, writes and tweets on topics related to the intersections of race, religion, identity, trauma, healing and collective well-being. She also shares random anecdotes about her Tiny Human, her two Teens and her pandemic pets: cat John Brown, and hounds: Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey.

Emily Vogt

Dr. Emily Vogt is the Academic Dean and Director of the MA, STM, and PhD Programs at Chicago Theological Seminary. She earned a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, where her work focused on issues of historicity, citizenship, and culture in the French Caribbean. Dr. Vogt conducted ethnographic research for her dissertation on the island of Martinique, where she was supported by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research grant. Her scholarly interests always include using lived experience to inform social analysis, and thinking about the historicization and cultural contextualization of normative concepts. Future projects will touch on the historical relationship between missionaries and anthropology, and the way people on mission trips today engage with the populations they ostensibly mean to serve.

José Francisco Morales Torres

As a historical and comparative theologian, Professor Morales places historical voices into conversation with historically marginalized voices, within and beyond the Christian tradition, offering radical re-articulations of the affirmations of faith for today’s realities. His research interests include: comparative and contextual approaches to historical theology; the development of Christian doctrines; Jewish-Muslim-Christian encounters in medieval philosophy and theology; liberation theologies; and the history of Latin American and Caribbean philosophy.  Thoroughly interdisciplinary in his approach, Professor Morales weaves together comparative theology, history of thought, and philosophy (especially existentialism and phenomenology). His most recent book is Wonder as a New Starting Point for Theological Anthropology: Opened by the World (Lexington Books, 2023), which proposes a new theological anthropology informed by the experience of wonder.

Como teólogo histórico y comparativo, el profesor Morales pone voces históricas en conversación con voces históricamente marginadas dentro y fuera de la tradición cristiana, ofreciendo rearticulaciones radicales de las afirmaciones de fe para las realidades de hoy. Sus áreas de interés investigativo abarcan los enfoques comparativos y contextuales en la teología histórica; el desarrollo de doctrinas cristianas; los encuentros judío-islamo-cristianos en la filosofía y la teología medievales; las teologías de la liberación; y la historia de la filosofía latinoamericana y caribeña. El profesor Morales entrelaza la teología comparativa, la historia del pensamiento y la filosofía (especialmente el existencialismo y la fenomenología) en su metodología plenamente interdisciplinaria. Su libro reciente es Wonder as a New Starting Point for Theological Anthropology: Opened by the World (Lexington Books, 2023), que propone una nueva antropología teológica informada por la experiencia de la maravilla.

Professor Morales is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). His ministry experience is broad, including congregational pastorate, advocacy, community organizing, wider denominational leadership, and education. He is married to Rev. Daphne M. Gascot Arias, also an ordained Disciples of Christ minister currently working on her Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible. They share life and laughs with their daughters Daphne Magnolia and Yael Marie.

El profesor Morales es un ministro ordenado en la Iglesia Cristiana (Discípulos de Cristo). Su experiencia ministerial es amplia, e incluye el pastoreo congregacional, la defensa y organización comunitarias, el liderazgo denominacional y la enseñanza. Está casado con la Reverenda Daphne M. Gascot Arias, también ordenada con los Discípulos de Cristo, quien actualmente está completando su Ph.D. en Biblia Hebrea/Antiguo Testamento. Comparten su vida y sus risas con sus hijas Daphne Magnolia y Yael Marie.

MY PEDAGOGY: “I am committed to nurturing both critical rigor toward, and faithful appreciation of, the Christian tradition that listens deeply for liberative timbres and undertones previously unheard or ignored. Informed by liberationism, pragmatism and critical theory, I am committed to vocational formation as revolutionary praxis. At its best, pedagogy is transforming, liberating and scandalous, for it offers a vision of what hopefully might be and an indictment of what unfortunately is. Specifically pertaining to Latinx studies and religion, I excitingly unearth Latin American/Caribbean philosophical and theological traditions previously unrecognized or underutilized in North Atlantic theologizing, so as to expand theological imagination and construction in useful and radical ways.”

MI PEDAGOGÍA: «Estoy comprometido a cultivar tanto un rigor crítico como una fiel apreciación hacia la tradición cristiana que busquen una escucha profunda de los timbres y matices liberadores que han sido previamente ignorados en la tradición. Informado por el liberacionismo, el pragmatismo y la teoría crítica, estoy comprometido con la formación profesional como praxis revolucionaria. En sus mejores momentos, la pedagogía es transformadora, liberadora y escandalosa, pues ofrece una visión esperanzadora de las cosas como pueden ser, y una denuncia de las cosas como lamentablemente son. Con respecto a los estudios latinos, me propongo a descubrir tradiciones filosóficas y teológicas latinoamericanas/caribeñas previamente no reconocidas o subutilizadas en el ámbito teológico del mundo noratlántico con el fin de expandir la imaginación y la construcción teológica de maneras útiles y radicales».

Ken Stone

Professor Stone, a Lambda Literary Award winner, focuses his research on the relationship between critical theory and biblical interpretation and matters of gender, sexuality, animals, and ecology.

“I always encourage students to question their own assumptions about the content and interpretation of the Bible.  Such a process of questioning need not be destructive, but rather creates opportunities for pursuing a two-fold goal.  On the one hand, we must obtain a thorough knowledge of both the surprising diversity of the biblical writings and their historical and socio-cultural contexts. On the other hand, we must reflect critically on the difficult process of interpreting and teaching those writings in a manner that will help us transform our own world toward greater justice and mercy.”

Bo Myung Seo

Professor Seo’s research focuses on theology and contemporary culture, comparative religions and philosophy of religion. Recent writings have focused on theological interpretations of contemporary cultural phenomena.

“How we understand specific passages of the Bible and the nature of prophecy often depends on how we view the world. Whether we seek to transform or merely to understand the world, we proceed with a prior conception of how the world is or is meant to be.  So being open to and learning from the achievements of other ‘worldly’ disciplines, as it helps us understand today’s world, is an important part of how we do theology today.  Also, geographically, the West is no longer the dominant center of Christianity, and the growth of churches in the Third World should be accompanied by a different theological consciousness.  I have come to see the central issue facing today’s world as that of domination.  Domination is always based on power, forcing its will, interest and logic unto others. How to speak for the dominated of the world is an important theological question. Theology can longer dwell comfortably in the realm of the sacred. As we are called into the world, our task is to start with the realities of the world.”

Christophe Ringer

Professor Ringer’s research interests include theological and social ethics, African American religion, public theology, religion and social sciences, religion and politics, critical theory and African American religion, and cultural studies. He is particularly interested in African American religion as a site for understanding the relationship of self, society and the sacred as it concerns human flourishing. Ringer’s research currently focuses on the religious and cultural meanings that sustain and rationalize mass incarceration and other forms of social death in American public life.

“My teaching is guided by the conviction that theological ethics critically engage wide variety of disciplines in order to understand the ethical challenges and complexities our world faces today. Moreover, those preparing for ministry should be acquainted with the perennial problems of the human condition as well the conceptual tools to respond to specific challenges that we cannot yet imagine.”

Rachel S. Mikva

Professor Mikva served as a congregational rabbi for thirteen years before returning to academia.  Her research and teaching focus on interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in various times and places, exploring how the ideas both shape and reflect the societies in which they unfold. She is especially interested in the intersections of exegesis, culture and ethics.

The most profound truths are not simple ones, and they often live in dialectical tension with other truths. Pursuit of justice is essential, but the equally compelling call to mercy sometimes (gently) pushes justice aside. Freedom is a God-given right, but freedom without commitment and purpose leaves us rootless. Peace is our perpetual desire, even as we sometimes decide we must fight. We also live with the breathtaking and terrifying knowledge that religious passion is a catalyst for great good, but all too often is wielded as a weapon.

“Much of rabbinic literature is devoted to exploring these tensions, trying to sketch the limits of our ideas so they don’t become dangerous absolutes. There is a Divine standard, but it has always been mediated humanly. The fact that the Hebrew Bible itself did not become Scripture before it had already begun to be multiply interpreted should help us see that it is the ongoing search for meaning that makes for a holy text. We search together in community and help each other reach toward the Divine call. In this journey, we find religious inspiration and guidance. It marks a path to redemption.”

W. Scott Haldeman

Specializing in the history, theology and practice of US Protestant worship, Professor Haldeman is also interested in the less formal ways human beings ritualize themselves in relation to various categories of identity, such as race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality. His first book, Towards Liturgies of Reconciliation: Race and Rites among African American and European American Protestants (Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2007), analyzes the role of racism in the development of US Protestant worship. In queer religious studies, examples of his work include: “A Queer Fidelity: Reinventing Christian Marriage” in Theology and Sexuality 13:2 (Spring 2007), 173-188.

“Worship provides Christians with an opportunity to leave behind – for momentary and fragile periods – the structures of inequality and violence that pervade our lives and to imagine – and, even more, to experience – an alternative mode of being, a place and time where justice and peace are known, where a communion of love is tasted, ingested and so … embodied. The fact that public prayer on most Sundays in most local Christian communities hardly resembles such an ideal may discourage many of us, but it does not negate the claim. The critical appraisal of the captivity of worship to modernist rationality and disempowering clericalism as well as its disengagement from the reality of daily life is required for effective ministry. In addition, it is crucial for religious leaders to be competent in preparing and leading authentic, just and transformative worship. Political organization, action, and protest will always be necessary if we desire to reform society, but we must pursue ritual action as well – where in an environment of beauty and abundance, in gathering with neighbors and strangers, in the encounter of the Holy, we know a joy that, to invoke poet warrior Audre Lorde, makes us dissatisfied with anything less in our every day lives.”