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 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

Saint Benedict Servants of Christ Chair 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 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 was the J. I. Packer Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He previously taught for six years at Trinity Western University in Langley, BC (1999–2005). He has also served as a pastor for several years (1994–1998). In 2015, he was appointed as a member of Evangelicals and Catholics Together. Among Hans’s main theological interests are Catholic thought, the church fathers, and patristic exegesis. Hans and his wife Linda live in Langley, BC. From 2015–2016, he held the Danforth Visiting Chair at St. Louis University.

Michael Curry

Presiding Bishop
Episcopal Church USA

Biography

Fleming Rutledge

Author, Speaker, Preacher, Teacher

Biography

Fleming Rutledge, having spent twenty-two years in parish ministry, now has an international preaching and teaching vocation. Her most recent book, God Spoke to Abraham: Preaching from the Old Testament (Eerdmans), has received praise from many leading Old Testament scholars as well as preachers. Her previous books have met with wide acclaim across denominational lines and national borders. She is also author of The Battle for Middle-earth: Tolkien’s Divine Design in The Lord of the Rings (also Eerdmans), which has a fan base in Europe as well as the US. She received a grant from the Louisville Institute to write a book-length treatment of the contemporary meaning of the Crucifixion. Having divided this 800-page work into two volumes, she is presently on her way to submitting the first volume to Eerdmans for editing within the next six months.

Mrs. Rutledge served as interim rector of St. John’s, Salisbury, Connecticut (1996-7), and has twice been a resident Fellow at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton. During the 2008 fall term, she was resident at Wycliffe College in the University of Toronto School of Theology, where she taught preaching. Most recently, she was a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome (April 2010).

Mrs. Rutledge is widely recognized in the United States, in Canada, and in the UK not only as a preacher and lecturer, but also as one who teaches other preachers. Her particular expertise is the intersection of Biblical theology with contemporary culture, current events and politics, literature, music and art. She has often been invited to preach in prominent pulpits such as the Washington National Cathedral, the Duke University Chapel, Trinity Church in Boston, and the Harvard Memorial Chapel.

Ordained to the diaconate in 1975, Mrs. Rutledge was one of the first women to be ordained to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church (January 1977). She matriculated at General Theological Seminary and received her Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1975.

For fourteen years Mrs. Rutledge was assistant and then Senior Associate at Grace Church in New York City, a parish celebrated at that time for its youthful congregation and evangelistic preaching. She was actively involved in the renewal there. Her previous position was at Christ’s Church, Rye, New York, where she was known for her creation and leadership of an extensive Christian program for high-school youth.

A native of Franklin, Virginia, Mrs. Rutledge graduated from Sweet Briar College in 1959, magna cum laude with highest honors in English. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She has received two honorary Doctor of Divinity degrees, from Virginia Theological Seminary and Wycliffe College in the University of Toronto.

Fleming and her husband, Reginald E. (Dick) Rutledge, celebrated their 60th anniversary in 2019. They have two grown daughters and two grandchildren.