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Assistant Professor of History of Christianity
and Academic Director of the Oklahoma Campus

Phone: 405-778-3821
Email:
Curriculum Vitae

Education

PhD in History of Christianity, Reformation Studies, Baylor University
Master of Arts Church History, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
Master of Arts New Testament, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
BA in Religion, Oklahoma Baptist University

Denomination

Baptist

Discipline or Specialty

Late Medieval/Early Modern Europe; the Reformation; Religion and Gender; Cultural History

Disciplinary/Research Interests

Masculinity in the Reformation; chivalry and religion in medieval Europe; social imaginaries and religious identity; American evangelicalism and culture; the function of polemic in self-fashioning; the cultural boundaries and political functions of “Christian orthodoxy”

What do you hope your students come away with when they leave your classroom?

Regardless of what course I’m teaching, I hope students take with them a better understanding of the historical craft in the context of the academic study of Christianity. I want students to appreciate the ever-changing relationship between Christianity and power in society, and to recognize that Christianity is always culturally embedded—this is a feature, not a bug, of the Christian religion. Ultimately, I hope students come away with a renewed sense of humility about their own place in religious history and a posture of generosity and charity toward others.

What is your teaching style?

I love working with primary sources as well as introducing students to the work historians are doing now. We do a lot of reading in my classes! But this reading is never done in isolation. We’re always talking about what we read together. I also enjoy focusing on material culture, whether that’s a painting by Caravaggio or a fabric talisman worn by Coptic Christians. So my courses are a mixture of lecture, discussion about texts, and exploration of the visual worlds of the past.

Representative Courses Taught

HST 301 and 302 – Introduction to Christian Traditions I and II

HST 414/514 – Spiritual Traditions and Ministry

Recent Publications

“Why pastoral qualifications in the Bible aren’t really about gender.” Baptist News Global, June 26, 2024.

“Playing for God: The American Play Movement and Missionary Education in the Early Twentieth Century.” Fides et Historia 55 (2024): 55-74.

“CRT is a useful tool in analyzing Baptist history on race.” Baptist News Global, January 19, 2024.

“Gender, Knighthood, and Spiritual Imagination in Henry Suso’s Life of the Servant.” Church History 91 (2022): 1-19.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

“Tough and Tender: Theology and Masculinity in the 1991 Baptist Hymnal.” Baptist History & Heritage 56.1 (2021): 39-59.*

*Winner, 2022 Julian Gwyn Essay Prize in Baptist and Anabaptist History and Thought, Acadia Centre for Baptist and Anabaptist Studies, Acadia University.

“‘Church Sweat’: Luther, Karlstadt, and the Reformation of Academic Masculinity.” Church History and Religious Culture 100.1-2 (2020): 319-341.

“Salvation and Speech Act: Reading Luther with the Aid of Searle’s Analysis of Declarations.” Perichoresis 15.1 (2017): 101-116.