Cooperations

Dr. Srdjan Sremac

Dr Srdjan Sremac is a lecturer at the Faculty of Religion and Theology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the co-director of the Amsterdam Center for the Study of Lived Religion at the same university. Srdjan co-edits a book series Lived Religion and Societal Challenges published by Palgrave Macmillan. He is widely published with 18 (co-) authored or edited books and over 50 journal articles and book chapters.

Dr. Katja Tolstoja

Dr Katja Tolstoja is the founder and director of the Institute for the Academic Study of Eastern Christianity (INaSEC), and is Associate Professor in Systematic Theology at the Vrije Universtiteit, Amsterdam. She specializes in the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church and the impact of the Soviet legacy on post-Soviet Russian Orthodoxy. As NWO-Veni laureate (2009-2012) she studied the transformation and (re-)invention of Orthodox theology and practice in Russia and Ukraine. She is currently working to initiate Theology after Gulag as a model for coming to terms with the traumatic Soviet past.

Dr. Robert Beckford

Dr Robert Beckford is the Climate and Social Justice professor at the University of Winchester and professor of Black Theology at the Queen’s Ecumenical Foundation and the Vrije Universiteit. In addition, Beckford is a scholar-activist researching the entanglements of faith and racial justice in the Black Atlantic through diverse media texts.

He has written a dozen books that triangulate African Diaspora theology, Black British cultural studies and black radicalism. Robert’s latest book, “Decolonizing Gospel Music: A Radical Praxis,” is published by Bloomsbury in 2021. The book is an action-reflection study of Robert’s debut contemporary gospel album, The Jamaican Bible Remix. (See https://www.canterbury.ac.uk/arts-and-humanities/school-of-humanities/religion-philosophy-and-ethics/research/jamaican-bible-remix.aspx) Beckford is also a British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA), award-winning documentary filmmaker, having presented over twenty documentary films for the BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery. Beckford’s current film project, ‘Redeeming Slavery,’ is an independent documentary film on British Christianity’s obfuscation of its intellectual and financial investment in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (2021)

Rev. Prof. Dr. David P. Gushee

Rev. Prof. Dr. David P. Gushee (PhD, Union Theological Seminary, New York) is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, and Chair of Christian Social Ethics at Vrije Universiteit (“Free University”) Amsterdam, and Senior Research Fellow, International Baptist Theological Study Centre.

Gushee is the elected Past-President of both the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Christian Ethics, signaling his role as one of America’s leading Christian ethicists. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of more than 28 books and over 175 academic book chapters, journal articles, and reviews (see his full academic C.V.). His most recognized works include Kingdom Ethics, and Changing Our Mind. His other most notable works are Introducing Christian Ethics, Still Christian, After Evangelicalism, Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust, and the recent Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies. Altogether his books have sold over 100,000 copies and been translated into a dozen languages.

For the general media, Gushee has written hundreds of opinion pieces and given interviews to scores of major outlets and podcasts.

With his works read around the world, and an active lecturing schedule on several continents, he has global impact in the field of Christian ethics. A leader in the growing post-evangelical movement, he has also put feet to his faith in several activist campaigns.

Dion A. Forster – D.Th (SA); Ph.D (Radboud)

Dion Forster is a Professor of Public Theology in the Faculty of Religion and Theology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He also serves as a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Theology, Stellenbosch University and at Wesley House, Cambridge University. Dion’s research focusses on the intersections of faith and public life viewed through the intersectional lenses of social and political identities. He holds two PhD’s, one in Systematic Theology (2006) and another in New Testament Studies (2017). His most recent books are ‘African Public Theology’ (Langham, 2020), ‘The (im)possibility of forgiveness?’ (Wipf & Stock, 2019), and ‘Reconciliation, Religion and Violence in Africa’ (African SUN Media, 2020).

Schuyler Pals

Schuyler is the website administrator for the ACRPJ Schuyler is from the United States, has a B.A. in Peace and Conflict Studies, a M.A. in Theology and Religious Studies: Peace, Trauma, and Religion from Vrije Universiteit, and a Juris Doctorate from The University of Iowa College of Law.

Some of the organizations Schuyler has worked with are Musahala in Jerusalem, I-Dare for Sustainable Development in Amman, Jordan, and the Youth Initiative for Human Rights in Zagreb, Croatia