The course of my life was set by the combination of an intellectually and relationally rich childhood together with a religious conversion outside of my family’s Roman Catholic tradition when I was 16 years old. The Baptist church I joined offered a totalistic vision of commitment that swept me into its practices, norms, and enthusiasms, mostly for the good. Within a year I was reporting a “Call” to Christian ministry. Eight years after that I was in fact an ordained Baptist minister.
During my seminary days I discovered a second calling – academia, in particular, the field of Christian social ethics. This field pulled together piety, intellect, and social/political awareness for me. I took a leap to the liberal-radical Union Seminary New York right after Southern Baptist Seminary. It was quite a change, but in the end I received the Ph.D. in Christian ethics with a dissertation on Christians who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. That became a book which remains in print 32 years later.
Over these three decades I have taught on the staffs of three different Baptist institutions (for nearly twenty years, Mercer University) and written an average of one book per year. My most widely read books are a co-authored introductory text (Kingdom Ethics, with Glen Stassen), Changing Our Mind (on LGBTQ+ inclusion), and After Evangelicalism (providing analysis and counsel for the growing numbers of former evangelical Christians). My most recent work is a biblical study called The Moral Teachings of Jesus; it is fulfilling my fondest hopes and being picked up in numerous local churches for study. Another book with a biblical focus will be my next work: Job in Exile: A Guide for Spiritual Refugees is an original study of the staggeringly complex book of Job.
I have written about peace and peacemaking in several works, including an edited work nearly twenty years ago called Evangelical Peacemakers. My post-evangelical and Job books all deal with religious trauma; indeed, my argument is that the character Job is traumatized both by his horrible losses but also by the rejection of his questions by his religious community.
Five years ago I had the great privilege of adding to my US work a post as Chair in Christian Social Ethics at VU Amsterdam. Here I have had the opportunity to supervise PhD students for the first time, and plan to do this until VU tells me I am no longer allowed to do so! Part of what makes VU so special is the chance to interact with high-quality students from all over the world. The PTR group is one such place, and I am very glad to be a part of it.
Written by: David Gushee
