A Statement about my Work

My professional work has revolved around an exploration of the way faith images shape our relationships and organizational life. This effort spans the forty years from my college thesis on how faith images shaped the work of church leaders to my most recent publications on symbolism, ethics, and worship. Along the way I have used key organizing images such as that of the oikos (the ancient household), covenant, and public to understand the relation of religion to key social institutions, as well as ethical issues in ecology, and in ritual life, both in the church and in society. My organizational work has been devoted to the education of religious leaders, the fostering of Christian participation in public life, and cultivation of public structures for reconciliation and restorative justice. In recent years I have turned to fiction writing and woodworking as a way to bring together my interests in ritual, ecology, and restorative justice

Brief Biography

I am the Herbert Gezork Professor of Christian Social Ethics, Emeritus, at Andover Newton Theological School. Born in Washington, DC, I went on for higher education at Wesleyan University (B.A.), Yale Divinity School (B.D.), and Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Ph.D.). After completing my graduate study I taught for fifteen years at St. Francis Seminary in Milwaukee and then for ten years in Atlanta at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University, where I also directed Candler's professional doctoral programs. My subsequent tenure at Andover Newton focused on issues of symbolism and ethics, ecology, and restorative justice. Intertwined with these posts have been guest professorships in Germany, India, and South Africa. 

I have exercised lay leadership in both Baptist and Methodist churches as well as been a consultant to Lutheran, Roman Catholic and various ecumenical bodies. In the 1980s my wife Sylvia and I developed the OIKOS Project on Work, Family and Faith, a program of research and adult education, which still shapes much of my professional work. 

I have written extensively on church and society issues involving family, economics, ecology, politics, symbolism, and law. Publications include God's Federal Republic: Reconstructing our Governing Symbol (Paulist Press, 1988), Religion, Federalism, and the Struggle for Public Life: Cases from Germany, India, and America (Oxford University Press. 1997). These interests in political ethics were taken up in a subsequent book, The Politics of Worship (United Church Press, 1999), which explores the significance of political models for contemporary worship.

My present interests are in three areas: worship, symbolism, and ethics; ecological ethics; and restorative justice. In the past few years I have given increasing time to the construction of liturgical furniture, especially in the form of round communion tables. I have just completed a historical novel connecting the histories of the United States and South Africa around issues of reconciliation and restorative justice from an ecological perspective. We live in the Smoky Mountains near Waynesville, NC, where woodworking flows from the native forests and novels emerge from diaries like mountain streams in spring.