UNIQUE EXPERIENCES, PERSONAL INTERESTS, AND BACKGROUND

I think that I have some unique experiences, knowledge, dispositions, and skills, which I bring to the classroom.  The following aspects may be personal, but they do reflect ways in which I have been shaped and interests that I have.

-- Although my PhD is in New Testament and Ancient Christianity, my undergraduate degree is in Economics and I have also studied metallurgical engineering. My Bachelor of Science degree in economics reflects both my pragmatic side and my interest in social-scientific research.  As an undergraduate, I assumed that I was going to eventually practice law, so I studied economics, worked for a summer in a county (prosecuting) attorney’s office, and served as a congressional intern.  I also have an active interest in the natural sciences.  While in high school (during the administration of President Jimmy Carter), I received a grant from the Department of Energy to study which metallic compounds could best store hydrogen.  This research was conducted at Ames Laboratories, at Iowa State University.  That breadth of interests reflects well why I so enjoy and appreciate the liberal arts environment.

--My alma mater is very similar to Virginia Wesleyan.  Morningside College, in Sioux City, Iowa, is a small, private, Methodist liberal arts college.  Small colleges like ours are so helpful in expanding horizons.  Although I was strongly committed to the study of economics and law, opportunities at Morningside helped me to see more clearly the value of the humane sciences (especially English, philosophy, and religious studies).  Virginia Wesleyan provides students with similar opportunities for life-changing experiences.

--On the Board of Trustees of my alma mater, I serve on the Executive Committee and  as Chair of the Academic Affairs Committee (I have served on that board for five years).  That experience involves me traveling to board meetings three times a year, where I have the opportunity to see the sorts of policies and possibilities that could shape life at Virginia Wesleyan.  For instance, because of Morningside’s curricular reform, I now see my entire teaching philosophy as centered on the fact that college should nurture not just knowledge, but also skills and dispositions. 

--In Japan I studied Buddhism, lived with two very different types of Buddhist families, and developed a clear sense for how religions function differently and how they make radically different claims.   While in Japan (1983-84), I lived for five months with a married couple who taught chadoo (tea ceremony), sumie (black ink painting), and ikebana (flower arranging).  I also lived for five months with a married couple that practiced Nichiwren Shoshu Buddhism.  This is the one Buddhist sect which actively prosleytizes, so I had a particularly meaningful experience, both as they sought to convert me and as they took me to a large number of Buddhist activities.  Through some unusual circumstances I studied for a full year with Thomas Cleary, the foremost Buddhist scholar/translator in the world.  Since the time I was in Japan (1983), I have been actively interested in Buddhism.  This experience has shaped courses I teach, grants I have received, and my attitude towards the importance of students having an overseas experience. 

--In 1985 hrough a grant from the United States Information Agency (USIA), I went on a series of archaeological expeditions in Jordan.  During that time, I developed a sense of the varieties of archaeological method and of the limitations of material evidence in the study of the Bible.  While in northern Jordan (near Irbid), I worked both on a survey team, and on early bronze (2000 bce) and Natufian (10,000 bce) sites.  I excavated charnel hut tombs while being held upside down, I used dynamite in clearing out foundation walls, and I came to see how German and Jordanian archaeologists approach the field with radically different presuppositions.  While in Jordan,I also had the opportunity to spend time with King Hussein and Queen Noor at their palace in Amman, and  to study Islam within a particularly liberal context.  This experience has affected so many courses I teach (e.g., world religions, Islam, Old Testament, and New Testament).

--As a Fulbright/DAAD Scholar, I studied the Septuagint and the History of Religions School (Religionsgeschichtliche Schule) in Göttingen.  In Göttingen, I worked at the Septuagint Institute (the Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures).  At the Institute, I had the great experience of working through Hebrew grammar and Greek translation issues, all while conversing and studying only in German.  During this time, I was also studying and researching the apostle Paul with Dr. Gerd Lüdemann.  Lüdemann then, as now, was the most renowned New Testament scholar in Germany.  He and I spent a great deal of time walking and talking. 

--When in Germany I worked with political refugees.  Through a unique situation, a Rotary Club in Goslar, West Germany, heard about my research and offered to financially support my work in Germany for four extra months.  Through this experience, I met some ministers and some civic officials, and I became intrigued by the challenges faced by political refugees.  In Germany, political refugees frequently are taken care of by the church.  However, because there is no strong separation of church and state, refugees do not fully trust the church.  Because I was a minister who was not German, they did trust me, and so I worked with them, not only with counseling and with bureaucratic paperwork, but also with shopping, and basic language issues.

--I studied New Testament in a very distinctive program.  I attended Yale University because it represented--within the last century—what I see as the most clearly defined school of thought in New Testament studies.  The program focused on the Greco-Roman world and, as such, it involved clear links with classics, history, and comparative literature.  These connections were exploited when every Monday, for lunch, scholars from all of these disciplines would gather for what was called the “Greco-Roman lunch.”  One professor or doctoral student would present, and then everyone would respond , in what was generally a raucous conversation.  The love and joy of scholarship just pervaded the atmosphere.

--In that environment, I became curious about social-historical issues.  In particular, I started wondering what ancient Roman prisons were like.  The question was a natural one, because I was interested in Paul, and five of Paul’s letters in the New Testament were said to have been written from prison.  What was prison like?  How might that have shaped Paul’s writings?  What would Paul and his readers known about prison that they wouldn’t have bothered to explicitly communicate in their letters?  Although I consider myself a hard worker, and although I feel that opportunities frequently happen only because much ground work is laid, I also feel like I really did stumble onto an amazing research area, when I began to look at Roman prisons.  Whereas previous research had understood Roman prisons only in light of ancient legal sources, I triangulated a much wider variety of sources that described prison life and, thus, developed a much thicker description of ancient imprisonment.  I brought together resources from legal codes, historical documents, ancient novels, ancient books of dream interpretation, even astrological codes.  As a result of my monograph (Chained in Christ:  The Experience and Rhetoric of Paul’s Imprisonments, 1996) and my commentary on Philemon (in The Oxford Bible Commentary, 2001), my research on ancient Roman prisons, Philemon, and Philippians has shaped the field.

--I worked at a homeless shelter when I was in graduate school at Yale.  Because New Haven is an economically depressed city, because it is difficult to go to Yale without encountering homeless people, and because the wealth of Yale undergraduates (and of the university as a whole) contrasts so sharply with the poverty of so many of the citizens, I felt like it was important to get a better sense for the city as a whole.  I initially volunteered at the Columbus House Shelter, serving food and cleaning up.  Fairly rapidly, however, I was employed there, working 4 a.m.-12 or 12-8 a.m. shifts.  I learned how to make grits.  I broke up a number of knife fights.  I learned how to search “guests.”  I broke up a fight where one woman was bashing another woman’s head with a brick, where blood and hair was all over the sidewalk.  And when I walked with my advisor or other professors down the streets of New Haven, and when truly dispossessed people would see me--and shout out to me, or eagerly shake my hand--that made my years of PhD work, much of which seemed to focus on a single Greek verb, make much more sense.

--Living in Israel and attending Hebrew University has given me helpful perspectives on the Middle East.  When I finished my coursework at Hebrew University, I knew I would never read the Bible in the same way.  After visiting Palestinian areas and the Gaza strip, I knew that I wouldn’t see the Israel/Palestinian issues in the same way.  What I didn’t realize was that bombs would be blowing up less than a city block from where I had lived.  And so I would never see the fragility of life in the same way.

--My ordination, as a Presbyterian minister, has shaped my view on my life and my role at the college.  When I was in college, I was an agnostic.  Actually, I claimed to be an atheist, but largely because that seemed to reflect more of the political statement that I wanted to communicate.  I think that college should be a time of questioning for students and, of course, many students question their religious upbringing.  At the same time, I think that many students don’t “question” faith per se, they “react” against it.  I appreciate the opportunity to talk with students about significant life issues.

--Serving as pastor at Squires Memorial Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia has been a wonderful experience.  Although I have served in a variety of leadership roles (e.g., student government president in high school and college, chair of a variety of committees, coordinator of academic department), serving at Squires has given me the opportunity to think systematically about an institution in ways that I have not before.  That has been meaningful.  What has been infinitely more meaningful has been the opportunity to grow in a loving, fun, spirit-filled community.

--I was named a Fellow for two prestigious national organizations:  the Pluralism Project at Harvard University; and the American Council of Learned Societies.  For the Pluralism Project I researched the variety of religions in Hampton Roads.  This project was significant not simply because of the need to recognize the influence of Edgar Cayce and Pat Robertson, but also because changes in other religious communities have been particularly noteworthy.  For instance , there were no Muslim masjids, no Hindu temples, and no Buddhist temples in 1985, but less than 15 years later, there were eight masjids, a major Hindu temple, and over eight temples or meeting places for Buddhists.

As an ACLS Fellow, I focused on the role of contemplation in contemporary American prisons.  Prisons in the western world traditionally functioned as holding tanks until prisoners were either freed, beaten, or executed.  The notion of prisoners “serving time” did not develop until religions (specifically Christianity) developed the notion that prisons could serve the same sort of function as monastery cells had for errant monks.  Prisons could isolate the prisoner, and give the prisoner an opportunity to experience penance.  This movement reflects the development of the penitentiary.  Because so many models of imprisonment today tend not to focus on penance, this was a particularly interesting research project to work on.

--I have blue-collar sensibilities and sensitivities, which--I think--are helpful in an institution of higher education.  My father worked on an assembly-line in a bread production facility his entire life.  My mother never went to college.  She worked as a secretary.  When I was young, I sold vegetables from my garden door-to-door.  I have worked as a janitor in a movie theater,  I have worked in maintenance in a hotel.  I worked numerous summers detassling corn.  I worked for a couple of years in a submarine sandwich shop.  Because many of our students are first-generation college students who need to work to afford school, I think I can relate to some of what they are experiencing.

--“Marriage with children.”  Nothing has shaped my life more. 

--It seems peculiar to end a list like this by referring to a high school activity from almost 30 years ago.  Nothing, however, shaped my love for learning like competitive academic debate.  In 1980 I represented the state of Iowa, competing in both debate and original oratory at the national competition of the National Forensic League in Huntsville, Alabama.  Much more significant than that honor were the skills and dispositions that I had the opportunity to learn.  Through debate I learned how to structure an argument, think systematically, and speak more effectively.  Through switch-side debate I learned how to vehemently debate one side of an issue and then, an hour later, its exact opposite.  That sort of discipline was so important for me in acquiring the ability to entertain ideas without feeling like I need to embrace them.

A list like this may seem trivial; characterized more by episodic sensation than by substance.  It does, however, communicate some of what has been important to me over the years and some of what shapes me in the classroom.