Ephraim Radner

Professor of Historical Theology
Wycliffe College
Toronto, Canada

Biography

Ephraim Radner is a priest in the Episcopal Church (Diocese of Colorado) and professor of historical theology at Wycliffe College, an Anglican seminary affiliated with the University of Toronto. His doctorate from Yale Divinity School is in systematic theology.

Ephraim grew up in Berkeley, California, and studied music and art history before going to seminary. Following ordination and work in Burundi (East Africa), he served congregations in Brooklyn, Cleveland, New Haven, Stamford, and Pueblo. He has taught at Yale University and Iliff Seminary, as well as at the Episcopal seminary in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

He has written and edited several books, including The End of the Church (about how the Holy Spirit works in Church division), Spirit and Nature (about how the Holy Spirit is an intrinsically disputed actor), Hope Among the Fragments (how we live in a divided Church), and a theological commentary on Leviticus.

He lives in Toronto with his wife, the Rev. Annette Brownlee, and they have two adult children who both reside in Colorado.

N.T. Wright

Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity
University of St Andrews, Scotland

Biography

N.T. Wright is the former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England and one of the world’s leading Bible scholars. He is now serving as the chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at the School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews. For twenty years, Wright taught New Testament studies at Cambridge, McGill, and Oxford Universities, and he has been featured on ABC News, Dateline, The Colbert Report, and Fresh Air. Wright is the award-winning author of After You Believe, Surprised by Hope, Simply Christian, The Challenge of Jesus, and The Meaning of Jesus (coauthored with Marcus Borg), as well as the much-heralded series Christian Origins and the Question of God.

James K.A. Smith

Professor of Philosophy, Congregational and Ministry Studies
Calvin University
Grand Rapids, Michigan

Biography

James K. A. Smith is professor of philosophy at Calvin College, where he holds the Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview. Trained as a philosopher with a focus on contemporary French thought, Smith has expanded on that scholarly platform to become an engaged public intellectual and cultural critic. An award-winning author and widely-traveled speaker, he has emerged as a thought leader with a unique gift of translation, building bridges between the academy, society, and the church.

The author of a number of influential books, Smith also regularly writes for magazines and newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Slate, First Things, Christianity Today, Books & Culture, and The Hedgehog Review. He serves as editor-in-chief of Image journal.

He and his wife, Deanna, are elementary school (!) sweethearts with four children in college. Natives of Stratford, Ontario, they lived in Philadelphia and Los Angeles before settling in the Heritage Hill neighborhood of Grand Rapids. They are committed urban dwellers who enjoy gardening, travel, wine with friends, and curling up on the couch with their maltipoo, Kirby.

Wesley Hill

Associate Professor of Biblical Studies
Trinity School for Ministry
Ambridge, Pennsylvania

Biography

Wesley Hill is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. He is also a deacon serving at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Pittsburgh. He is the author of Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality (Zondervan, second edition 2016), Paul and the Trinity: Persons, Relations, and the Pauline Letters (Eerdmans, 2015), and Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian (Brazos, 2015). A contributing editor at Comment magazine, he writes regularly for Christianity Today, First Things, The Living Church, and other publications, including SpiritualFriendship.org which he co-founded.

Degrees

• B.A., Wheaton College, IL
• M.A., Durham University, UK
• Ph.D., Durham University, UK

Hans Boersma

Chair, Order of St. Benedict Servants of Christ Endowed Professorship in Ascetical Theology
Nasthotah House
Nashotah, Wisconsin

Biography

Hans Boersma (PhD, University of Utrecht), a theologian and experienced preacher, is the Saint Benedict Servants of Christ Chair in Ascetical Theology at Nasthotah House Theological Seminary in Wisconsin—a community of formation marked by the fullness of Anglican faith and practice, Benedictine spirituality, and classical Christian thought and teaching. Before coming to Nashotah House in 2019, he served as the J. I. Packer Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver. Among Hans’s main theological interests are Catholic thought, the church fathers, and patristic exegesis. His books include Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (2011); Scripture as Real Presence: Sacramental exegesis in the Early Church (2017); and Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition (2019). Hans and his wife Linda belong to Saint Matthew’s Anglican Church in Abbotsford, BC.

Stanley Hauerwas

Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law
Duke Divinity School
Durham, NC

Biography

Stanley Hauerwas has sought to recover the significance of the virtues for understanding the nature of the Christian life. This search has led him to emphasize the importance of the church, as well as narrative for understanding Christian existence. His work cuts across disciplinary lines as he is in conversation with systematic theology, philosophical theology and ethics, political theory, as well as the philosophy of social science and medical ethics. He was named “America’s Best Theologian” by Time magazine in 2001. Dr. Hauerwas, who holds a joint appointment in Duke Law School, delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectureship at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland in 2001.

He has written numerous influential books and articles, including A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic, which was selected as one of the 100 most important books on religion of the 20th century. Dr. Hauerwas also recently authored The Work of Theology (Eerdmans, 2015), Hannah’s Child: A Theological Memoir, 2^nd Ed. (Eerdmans, 2012), and War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity (Baker Academic Press, 2011).