Stanley Hauerwas

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

Durham, North Carolina

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).

Wesley Hill

Associate Professor of New Testament,
Western Theological Seminary

Holland, Michigan

Biography

Wesley Hill is an Episcopal priest. He has spoken and lectured at numerous Christian colleges and seminaries in the U.S. and internationally. In 2018 he was a member of the St. Augustine Seminar held at Lambeth Palace to prepare resources for the upcoming Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion in 2022. 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), Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian (Brazos, 2015), and The Lord’s Prayer: A Guide to Praying to Our Father (Lexham, 2019). A contributing editor for Comment magazine, he writes regularly for Christianity Today, The Living Church, and other publications.

Degrees

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

Samira Page

Founder and Executive Director
Gateway of Grace

Dallas, Texas

Biography

The Rev. Dr. Samira Izadi Page is the founder and executive director of Gateway of Grace, an outreach ministry to refugees, many of whom are survivors of severe trauma. Her organization helps refugees start over with donated furniture, pocket money, groceries, baby showers, job assistance, language lessons, and more. Most important, perhaps, Gateway trains volunteers and churches to adopt refugee families, the point where friendships form and integration begins.

Raised a Muslim in Iran, Samira found her way to the United States after a difficult trek escaping unrest from revolution and war at home. Arriving in Texas, a local church showed them unique kindness and generosity and soon became a second family. Today, her experiences help her not only to serve people displaced by war, famine, political turmoil, and natural calamities; but also to raise up churches and individuals to meet the needs of refugees despite their background, culture, or religious affiliation.

Biography

Mother Samira was born and raised in Iran as a Muslim. She and her family left Iran due to persecution and obtained political asylum status in the U.S. Mother Samira converted to Christianity.

She earned her Master of Divinity and doctorate in Missional Church Studies from Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. She has committed her life to bring the hope and love of Christ to those whose hope, dignity, and humanity have been taken away by oppressive governments and circumstances.

She is the author of Who Is My Neighbor and co-author and co-editor of No Longer Strangers: Transforming Evangelism with Immigrant Communities. She frequently speaks nationally and locally at conferences, churches and other venues on issues of interfaith relations, Islam and Christianity. She is also the Founder and Executive Director of Gateway of Grace Ministries and a church planter.

Mother Samira and her husband, Dennis, have four adult children and enjoy gardening and exploring restaurants in the area.

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.

Hans Boersma

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

Tish Harrison Warren

Author, Columnist, and Writer-in-Residence,
Resurrection Anglican Church

Austin, Texas

Biography

Tish Harrison Warren is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America. She is the author of Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, which was Christianity Today’s 2018 Book of the Year, and Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep. She has worked in ministry settings for over a decade as a campus minister with InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries, as an associate rector, and with addicts and those in poverty through various churches and non-profit organizations. Currently, she is Writer in Residence at Resurrection South Austin. She is a monthly columnist with Christianity Today, and her articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Religion News Service, Christianity Today, Comment Magazine, The Point Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a founding member of The Pelican Project and a Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum. She lives with her husband and three children in the Austin, Texas area.

Esau McCaulley

Assistant Professor of New Testament,
Wheaton College

Wheaton, IL

Biography

Fr. Esau McCaulley, PhD is an assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL and a priest in the Anglican Church in North America. His first book entitled Sharing in the Son’s Inheritance was published by T & T Clark in 2019. His second book Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope was published by IVP academic. He is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. His writings have also appeared in Washington Post and Christianity Today among other places. He is married to Mandy, a pediatrician and navy reservist. Together, they have four wonderful children.

Justin Holcomb

Canon for Vocations,
Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida

Orlando, Florida

Biography

Matthew Olver

Assistant Professor of Liturgics & Pastoral Theology,
Nashotah House Theological Seminary

Nashotah, Wisconsin

Biography

Fr. Olver joined Nashotah House in 2014 and teaches courses in the history of Christian worship, practical liturgics, early Christian liturgy, ecclesiology and ecumenism, and pastoral theology. His research interests include sacramental theology, early liturgical development, early Latin liturgy and the origin of the Roman Canon, as well as the development of Anglican liturgy. He has presented lectures and papers in the United States and around the world, authored a number of the entries on liturgy in the fourth edition of The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (ed. Andrew Louth), and is a regular contributor to the Covenant blog of The Living Church. He has articles published in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Nova et Vetera, Antiphon, Studia Liturgica, Anglican Theological Review, Journal of Anglican Studies, Worship, Questions Liturgiques, and Studia Patristica, with chapters in a number of collected volumes.

Fr. Olver serves the church at both diocesan and local levels. In 2005, he was ordained in the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas, which launched eight years of full-time pastoral ministry: first at St. John’s Episcopal Church and School (2005-06) and then as the assistant rector at  Church of the Incarnation, Dallas (2006-2013). There, he oversaw adult formation as well as the parish’s renowned music and liturgy program, and also served the diocese as the Ecumenical Officer (2005-2010) and on the Executive Council (2008-2011). From 2006 to 2015, he was a member of the  Anglican-Roman Catholic Consultation in the U.S. (ARCUSA), the official dialogue between the Episcopal Church and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and from 2018-2021, he was a member the Task Force on Liturgical and Prayer Book Revision for the Episcopal Church and is a delegate to the next General Convention.

Fr. Olver was raised in the Brethren in Christ tradition in southern Pennsylvania and sensed a call to a vocation in Christian ministry at a young age. A trained musician, he was introduced to Anglicanism as an undergraduate. Fr. Olver’s hobbies include running, rock climbing with his son, novels and films, and backyard chickens. He and his wife Kristen married in 2001, and they have two children. He and his family attend Zion Episcopal Church in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, where he is an assistant priest.

Emily Hylden

Vicar,
St. Augustine’s Oak Cliff

Dallas, Texas

Biography

A native Midwesterner, Mother Emily has lived in the south for her entire adult life; she met her husband, Father Jordan, while in graduate school at Duke University. She’s served churches in Durham, North Carolina; St. Louis, Missouri; and Columbia, South Carolina; as well as a stint in upstate New York during her M.Div training, at Christ Church in Cooperstown.

She came to the Anglican tradition in 2009 because of its beautiful worship, having been raised in the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Around the same time she was confirmed, she discerned a call to ordination and promptly fell in love with parish ministry. Her unofficial writings, as well as some sermons, can be found at emilyhylden.com.

Mtr. Emily also loves to bake bread, practice yoga, and snuggle her boys, Charles and Grady.

Terence Chandra

Priest In Charge,
St. John’s (Stone) Church

Saint John, New Brunswick

Biography

Terence was born and raised in Fredericton, New Brunswick. He graduated with an Honours degree in History from the University of New Brunswick and then went on to do an M.Div at Wycliffe College. Terence married Jasmine in 2006 and felt a strong calling to return to his home Province. Terence and Jasmine served in various parish settings for the first 8 years of ministry. They both had a vision for more community-based work and in 2014 Terence and Jasmine launched a community outreach organization now called “Pennies and Sparrows”. Pennies and Sparrows focuses on repairing the social fabric in the city of Saint John. Through relationship-based programs and projects, this ministry engages with some of the most marginalized people in the community. In 2020 Terence and Jasmine became co-priests in charge of Stone Church. Terence and Jasmine have two kids and find that sharing jobs and sharing child care, while at times complicated, has been one of the greatest joys in life (and can only be accomplished by the grace of God).

Jasmine Chandra

Priest In Charge,
St. John’s (Stone) Church

Saint John, New Brunswick

Biography

Jasmine is the daughter of radio missionaries and spent 12 years stationed in Monaco. After returning to North America she received a B.A. in Religious Education with a major in Counselling. This was followed by an M.Div at Wycliffe College in Toronto where she met Terence. Jasmine moved to New Brunswick after marrying Terence in 2006. In New Brunswick they served in various parish settings for the first 8 years of ministry. They both had a vision for more community-based ministry and in 2014 Terence and Jasmine launched a community outreach organization now called “Pennies and Sparrows”. Pennies and Sparrows focuses on repairing the social fabric in the city of Saint John. Through relationship-based programs and projects, this ministry engages with some of the most marginalized people in the community. In 2020 Terence and Jasmine became co-priests in charge of Stone Church. Terence and Jasmine have two kids and find that sharing jobs and sharing child care, while at times complicated, has been one of the greatest joys in life (and can only be accomplished by the grace of God).

Christopher Beeley

Jack and Barbara Bovender Professor of Theology, Anglican Studies, and Ministry; Director of the Anglican Episcopal House of Studies,
Duke Divinity School

Durham, North Carolina

Biography

Professor Beeley’s work lies at the intersection of systematic theology, Christian spirituality, and church leadership. An Anglican priest and a founding member of the Episcopal Gathering of Leaders, he has ministered in parishes in Texas, Indiana, Virginia, and Connecticut. Professor Beeley is the author of Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God (Oxford, 2008), which received the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise; The Unity of Christ: Continuity and Conflict in Patristic Tradition (Yale, 2012); and Leading God’s People: Wisdom from the Early Church for Today (Eerdmans, 2012), which is used in several denominational training programs. He is the series editor of Christianity in Late Antiquity (California), the official monograph series of the North American Patristics Society, and he recently co-edited The Bible and Early Trinitarian Theology (Catholic University, 2018). Professor Beeley is currently working on a brief systematic spirituality and a study of the legacy of Chalcedonian Christology. He also practices Christian spiritual direction and is a trainee in adult psychoanalysis. Prior to joining the Duke faculty, he taught for sixteen years at Yale Divinity School. He speaks nationally and internationally on Christian theology, spirituality, and church leadership.

Degrees

• B.A. Hons. in Philosophy, Washington and Lee University
• M.Div., Yale Divinity School
• Ph.D., University of Notre Dame