Rev. Dr. Gregory A. Love, associate professor of systematic theology at San Francisco Theological Seminary, has been named winner of the 2011 Angell Award by the Presbyterian Writers Guild (PWG).
The award is given by the PWG each year for the best first book published the previous calendar year by a Presbyterian writer. The award was established in 1996 by an endowment from the late Jim Angell.
Love’s book, Love, Violence, and the Cross: How the Nonviolent God Saves Us through the Cross of Christ was chosen from among 19 entries published in 2010. It was published by Cascade Books/Wipf and Stock.
“The central theme of this book is to articulate an alternative to the prevalent ‘penal substitutionary atonement’ interpretation of the crucifixion,” the Angell Award judges stated. “It presents a competent challenge to substitutionary atonement, a reasonable presentation of two modern theological alternatives, and a fair, good effort to create an alternative view of the crucifixion with the framework of Christian orthodoxy.”
In submitting his book, Love said: “The book attempts to explain how God can save us through Christ’s actions, including his death on Good Friday, in ways that make sense to people in the pews, and in ways that support perceiving God as non-violent. It makes use of stories from literature, movies, history and the news to bring theological ideas to life.”
Love earned Master of Divinity and PhD degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary and is a minister member of San Francisco Presbytery. He attends First Presbyterian Church of San Anselmo, Calif. (near the SFTS campus) “when I am not teaching in Bay Area churches.”
He will be leading a weeklong exploration of his book for recent SFTS graduates at Zephyr Point Conference Center at Lake Tahoe July 18-22.
Love has been asked back to speak at Zephyr Experience 2011, a long-running annual gathering of families from West Coast Presbyterian churches. He will lead a workshop on God and Human Suffering July 3-8 at Zephyr Point at Lake Tahoe.
In fall 2010, Love led a seven-week series on Islam in America at First Presbyterian Church of Burlingame, Calif. This spring, he was part of a five-week, team-led series at Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church, Calif., on Interfaith Dialogue between Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Jana Childers, professor of homiletics and speech communication, spent a week at University of British Colombia in Vancouver lecturing on preaching to pastors gathered at Carey Theological College. Carey provides theological education for undergraduate, Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry students of the Canadian Baptist churches. Childers enjoyed both the opportunity for ecumenical dialogue and the famously-beautiful city. She was keynote speaker at the Stewardship Kaleidoscope Conference in Phoenix in February. More than 300 pastors and church leaders attended the four-day event, where Childers preached, lectured and presented a workshop entitled “Preaching Stewardship to the Mad Men Generation.” In March, Childers, a regular contributor to the Presbyterian Outlook’s Benedictory column, presented a webinar hosted by the magazine. “Preaching to Rattle the Tea Cups and Wake the Dead” explored the power of non-verbal communication, reaching preachers across the country and reconnecting with alums as far away as Ohio and South Carolina. She also traveled on behalf of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) as the chair of a team evaluating another seminary in the region. In April, Childers went to Dubuque, Iowa, to give the Berger Lectures and preach at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. While there she shared leadership of a worship service with SFTS alum Rob Hoch, now assistant professor of homiletics at Dubuque.
Laurie Garrett-Cobbina, Shaw Family Chair for Clinical Pastoral Education, received some great news in April when the SFTS CPE program earned full accreditation from the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education. It was long and rigorous, but successfully demonstrated the quality of this ground-breaking program. SFTS earned the 2010 John Rea Thomas Award for excellence in the fields of pastoral care and counseling for its CPE program last summer. Garrett-Cobbina, SFTS Interim President Dr. Laird J. Stuart and John Shaw received the award at the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly in Minneapolis.
Sam Hamilton-Poore, director of the Program in Christian Spirituality and assistant professor of Christian spirituality, will travel to South Sudan in May and June at the invitation of the Episcopal Church of Sudan to teach seminarians and pastors in Renk and Malakal. He will also meet with leaders of the Presbyterian Church of Sudan, the Nile Theological College and the Giffen Bible School. In July he will co-lead the annual preachers retreat, “Before the Cradle and Beyond the Cross,” with the Rev. Dr. Judy Yates Siker.
Charlene Jin Lee, assistant professor of Christian education and director of student formation for the SFTS Southern California campus, led a workshop during Alumni Reunion Weekend in April entitled “Gratitude in Context: Living into Emancipatory Hope.” She will teach during the Doctor of Ministry summer session. Her seminar is entitled “Self, Other and Community.” It will explore identity as social and historical consciousness by interrogating the public landscape of diversity and the context of “the other” in which the self makes meaning.
Elizabeth Liebert, dean, associate vice president and professor of spiritual life, contributed a chapter, “The Spiritual Life with the Help of Favorite Poets,” contained in the newly released A Spiritual Life: Perspective from Poets, Prophets and Preachers, edited by Allan Hugh Cole, Jr. During the 2011 T.V. Moore Lectures, she offered a workshop entitled “Psalms of Thanksgiving: Praying, Singing, Writing,” in which she was assisted by Dan Hoggatt, professor of church music. Other recent speaking engagements include a class for ministry students on “The Rules for Thinking with the Church: Is it Possible to Reclaim this Section of the Spiritual Exercises?” and an adult education session for City Church, San Francisco, entitled “Lectio Divina for Passiontide.”
James Noel, H. Eugene Farlough, Jr. California Professor of African American Christianity Professor of American Religion, participated in a one-day interdisciplinary workshop entitled “Beautiful Martyrs: Aesthetics and Religious Violence.” It was sponsored by the Graduate Theological Union Dean’s Office and the Center for Jewish Studies in Berkeley, Calif., in February. Noel presented a paper with Rev. Dr. Matthew Johnson on “Treading Our Path through the Blood of the Slaughtered: Martyrdom in the African American Religious Tradition.” Johnson is an SFTS adjunct professor for the Doctor of Ministry Program. Noel’s artwork was featured at a Vallejo, Calif., gallery as part of its Black History Month celebration.
Christopher Ocker, professor of history, welcomed a distinguished lineup of interdisciplinary scholars of poverty to the Muilenberg-Koenig History of Religion Seminar this semester. He also chaired a session on “Vernacular Theology” at the international graduate student conference of the Program in Medieval Studies at the University of California this March. He responded to South African activist Dr. Allan Boesak’s lecture on campus in April. Ocker will teach a course in comparative Christian, Jewish and Muslim theology in SFTS’s Doctor of Ministry program this June. Later in the summer he travels to Heidelberg to teach an intensive course on sacred space and anti-Jewish violence during the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien summer session before participating in an international conference there on Early Medieval Jewish and Christian Biblical Interpretation. His paper, “Hebrew Idiom, Figurative Reading, and Mystical Meaning between Theodolf of Orléans and the Victorines,” studies the medieval background to the use of rhetoric and Hebrew grammar by Bible scholars in the Reformation.
Annette Schellenberg, associate professor of Old Testament, was granted tenure by the board of trustees on May 3. Schellenberg, who earned master and doctoral degrees from University of Zurich, expects to complete her latest book in the fall. The German book is entitled Der Mensch das Bild Gottes? Zum Gedanken einer Sonderstellung des Menschen im Alten Testament und in weiteren altorientalischen Quellen. (The Human Being, the Image of God? On the Idea of a Privileged Position of Human According to the Old Testament and other Ancient Near Eastern Sources)
Judy Yates Siker, professor of New Testament and vice president of SFTS Southern California, will be the featured scholar during “Before the Cradle and Beyond the Cross.” The annual preachers retreat, set for July 25-29 in San Anselmo, is a unique event that blends sermon preparation with spiritual formation.
Anne Wire, professor emerita, has a new book entitled The Case for Mark Composed in Performance published by Wipf & Stock Publishers. Wire argues that this story was not the product of a literary author but was composed by those who told it in early Christian communities over several decades. After groundwork in oral tradition research, the case begins by tracing the Mark we know back to early manuscripts. In their substantial difference we see the flexibility of oral ancestors. Examining the language in Mark we find it characterized by the special phrases and rhythms of speech. Its episodes reflect traditional forms used in storytelling. And its overall narrative follows the shape of stories about prophets’ signs widely told in that time. Finally we are asked to consider how oral composition helps to answer three questions in this gospel: Who is Jesus? When is God’s kingdom coming? And who told the story attributed to Mark? Mark’s writer turns out to be the one who finally writes down a treasured oral tradition, probably keeping close to the known story so the account in this new medium of writing would be accepted. Dr. Holly L. Hearon, professor of New Testament at Christian Theological Seminary, wrote: “Rarely does one have the pleasure of reading a book that presents its argument with such precision, clarity and elegance.”
Judy Yates Siker
Anne Wire
