Professor Brian Brock | |
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Born | Brian Reid Brock Baytown, Texas, US |
Nationality | American/British |
Education | MA, DipTH, BA, DPhil |
Alma mater | Colorado Christian University Loma Linda University University of Oxford King's College London |
Occupation(s) | Professor, Theologian |
Title | Professor of Moral and Practical Theology |
Academic career | |
Discipline | Theology |
Institutions | University of Erlangen–Nuremberg Duke Divinity School Theological University of the Reformed Churches University of Aberdeen |
Main interests | Disability Theology, Systematic Theology, and Theological Ethics |
Brian Brock (born 1970) is an American theologian. He holds a Personal Chair in Christian Ethics at the School of Divinity, History, and Philosophy, University of Aberdeen. [1]
Brock was born and raised in Baytown, Texas, where he was educated at Robert E. Lee High School. Before training as a theologian, he worked as an investigative reporter and editorialist from 1997 to 1999 for the Baytown Sun. [2]
Brock studied biology at Colorado Christian University before taking a Masters in Biomedical and Clinical Ethics at Loma Linda University. In 1997, he moved to the United Kingdom, where he studied theology at the University of Oxford, before completing his doctoral studies in Christian Ethics in 2003 at King's College London, working under Michael Banner and Colin Gunton. [3]
Brock conducted postdoctoral studies (2003-2004) at the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen–Nuremberg under Hans G. Ulrich. In October 2004, he was appointed as a lecturer in Practical and Moral Theology at the University of Aberdeen. He was elevated to a Personal Chair in 2018. He has been a visiting scholar at Duke Divinity School (2008-2009) and the University of the Reformed Church in Kampen in 2014.
Brock is a member of the University of Aberdeen's Centre for Spirituality, Health and Disability [4] and a founding member of the Centre for the Study of Autism and Christian Community Friendship. [5] He is also a founding member of the new University of Aberdeen Friendship House initiative. [6]
Brock plays an active role in teaching undergraduates at the University of Aberdeen, leading postgraduate seminars, and has successfully supervised thirty doctoral candidates, many of whom have published their doctoral theses as books, including Andrew Draper, [7] Scott Prather, [8] Tyler Atkinson, [9] Michael Laffin, [10] Benjamin Wall, [11] Amy J. Erickson, [12] Andrew Errington, [13] Steven Schafer, [14] Kevin Hargaden, [15] Jacob Marques Rollison, [16] Timothy Shaun Price, [17] Daniel Patterson, [18] Ross Halbach, [19] Allen Calhoun, [20] Michael Morelli, [21] and Emily Beth Hill. [22] In 2022, the Aberdeen University Students' Association (AUSA) named him Best Postgraduate Research Supervisor. [23]
Since 2016, Brock has been Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Disability and Religion. [24] Along with Susan Parsons, he is the founding editor of the academic monograph series, "T&T Clark Enquiries in Theological Ethics". [25] Since 2012 he has served on the Theological Commission of the Diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney, Scottish Episcopal Church. [26]
He is most notable for his contribution to the emerging field of disability theology, but has written widely in moral theology. [27] In 2018, he was awarded "Alumnus of the Year" by Loma Linda University, [28] being described as "a maker of social change who betters understanding of the Christian tradition." [29] He is regularly invited to offer plenary addresses at conferences relating to questions around disability and religion, or Christian Ethics more broadly construed. [30] [31] [32] [33] He delivered the 2024 Annual Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice lecture in Dublin, Ireland. [34]
Brock's first monograph, Singing the Ethos of God: On the Place of Christian Ethics in Scripture was published in 2007. [35] It was the subject of a special review edition of the journal European Journal of Theology in 2009. [36] He is also the author of Christian Ethics in a Technological Age (2010) [37] and Captive to Christ, Open to the World: On Doing Christian Ethics in Public (2014), [38] which was discussed on the prominent evangelical podcast Mars Hill. [39] Along with Stanley Hauerwas, he wrote Beginnings: Interrogating Hauerwas(2016), [40] which was the subject of a special symposium hosted by the School of Theology, Philosophy, and Music at Dublin City University. [41] His Disability in the Christian Tradition: A Reader, [42] which he prepared with John Swinton was the subject of a special edition of the Journal of Religion, Disability & Health. [43] The project he has been working on for over a decade, a theological account of disability, was published in 2019 as Wondrously Wounded: Theology, Disability, and the Body of Christ. [44]
Other books include Disability: Living into the Diversity of Christ's Body (2021) [45] and the two-volume Scriptural commentary on 1 Corinthians, co-written with Bernd Wannenwetsch entitled The Malady of the Christian Body [46] and The Therapy of the Christian Body. [47] He has edited or co-edited a number of essay collections, including Theology, Disability and Sport: Social Justice Perspectives, [48] A Graceful Embrace: Theological Reflections on Adopting Children, [49] The Freedom of a Christian Ethicist, [50] Evoking Lament: A Systematic Theological Enquiry [51] and Theology, Disability and the New Genetics: Why Science Needs the Church. [52] He also edited the first full-length English-language work by prominent German theologian Hans G. Ulrich, Transfigured Not Conformed: Christian Ethics in a Hermeneutic Key. [53]
He is the author of over twenty essays in journals including the International Journal of Systematic Theology, [54] Studies in Christian Ethics, [55] and Surveillance & Society . [56]
Stanley Martin Hauerwas is an American theologian, ethicist, and public intellectual. Hauerwas originally taught at the University of Notre Dame before moving to Duke University. Hauerwas was a longtime professor at Duke, serving as the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School with a joint appointment at the Duke University School of Law. In the fall of 2014, he also assumed a chair in theological ethics at the University of Aberdeen. Hauerwas is considered by many to be one of the world's most influential living theologians and was named "America's Best Theologian" by Time magazine in 2001. He was also the first American theologian to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in over forty years. His work is frequently read and debated by scholars in fields outside of religion or ethics, such as political philosophy, sociology, history, and literary theory. Hauerwas has achieved notability outside of academia as a public intellectual, even appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Alister Edgar McGrath is a Northern Irish theologian, Anglican priest, intellectual historian, scientist, Christian apologist, and public intellectual. He currently holds the Andreas Idreos Professorship in Science and Religion in the Faculty of Theology and Religion, and is a fellow of Harris Manchester College at the University of Oxford, and is Professor of Divinity at Gresham College. He was previously Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education at King's College London and Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture, Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Oxford, and was principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, until 2005.
Sir Iain Richard Torrance, is a retired Church of Scotland minister, theologian and academic. He is Pro-Chancellor of the University of Aberdeen, Honorary Professor of Early Christian Doctrine and Ethics at the University of Edinburgh, President and Professor of Patristics Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary, and an Extra Chaplain to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in Scotland. He was formerly Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Dean of the Chapel Royal in Scotland, and Dean of the Order of the Thistle. He is married to Morag Ann, whom he met while they were students at the University of St Andrews, and they have two children.
Max Lynn Stackhouse was the Rimmer and Ruth de Vries Professor of Reformed Theology and Public Life Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary. He was ordained in the United Church of Christ and was the president of the Berkshire Institute for Theology and the Arts.
Martha Reeves is a vowed Anglican solitary, with Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, as bishop-protector. A graduate of the Madeira School, she is also a Stanford-educated professor of theology who has written numerous articles and books under the name "Maggie Ross" as well as translated a number of Carthusian Novice Conferences. Reeves, at one time Desmond Tutu's spiritual director, was Bell Distinguished Professor in Anglican and Ecumenical Studies appointed to the Department of Philosophy and Religion, Kendall College of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tulsa. In 1995, "A Rite for Contemplative Eucharist" emerged while being a theologian-in-residence in an Episcopal church in the Diocese of Southern Ohio. In March 2008, she donated 'silence' to the Museum of Curiosity.. Ross as an interviewee also shared about silence in the 2015 documentary In Pursuit of Silence directed by Patrick Shen. In October 2016, she gave the lecture "Healing Silence' at Durham University for its "Spirituality, Theology, and Health Seminar Series." The Hay Festival has been an event for presenting about the 'work of silence' under the topic title "Maggie Ross Talks to Rachael Kerr". She was an attendee of the 2018 Epiphany Conference on science and religion, a collaborative initiative between the Cambridge Epiphany Philosophers and the Oxford Monastic Institute. The 'work of silence' has touched grounds for many years now through the ravenwilderness blogspot, and an index of posts from 2006 to 2013 can be viewed from here and the entries from 2013 to 2020 here. The British & Irish Association for Practical Theology (BIAPT) had a planned inaugural event for its Spirituality Interest Special Group in 2020, with Ross as keynote speaker but was postponed. The keynote address "Silent Ways of Knowing" had been shared in four parts in Ross's blog. Reeves lives in Oxford, the United Kingdom, where a number of sermons and talks had been shared through the years in churches and academia around the area.
Peter W. Ochs is the Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia, where he has served since 1997. He is an influential thinker whose interests include Jewish philosophy and theology, modern and postmodern philosophical theology, pragmatism, and semiotics. Ochs coined the term "scriptural reasoning" and is the co-founder of the Society for Scriptural Reasoning, which promotes interfaith dialog among Christians, Jews, and Muslims through scriptural study groups. He is also a co-founder of the Children of Abraham Institute, which promotes interfaith study and dialog among members of the Abrahamic religions.
Gary John Dorrien is an American social ethicist and theologian. He is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York and Professor of Religion at Columbia University, both in New York City, and the author of 18 books on ethics, social theory, philosophy, theology, politics, and intellectual history.
Christopher Kennedy Huebner is an associate professor of theology and philosophy at Canadian Mennonite University, as well as co-editor of Herald Press's Polyglossia series.
James M. Gustafson was an American theological ethicist. He received an honorary doctorate by the Faculty of Theology at Uppsala University in 1985. He has held teaching posts at Yale Divinity School and the Department of Religious Studies (1955–1972), the University of Chicago as professor of theological ethics in the Divinity School (1972–1988), and Emory University as the Henry R. Luce Professor of Humanities and Comparative Studies. He retired in 1998 after 43 years of teaching and research, after being Woodruff Professor of Comparative Studies and of Religion in the Emory College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award for "creative and lasting contributions to the field of Christian ethics" on January 7, 2011, at the annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics in New Orleans.
Amos Yong is a Malaysian-American Pentecostal theologian and Professor of Theology and Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary. He has been Dean of School of Theology and School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Seminary, since July 1, 2019.
Anthony Oliver Davies is a British systematic theologian. He has made contributions to the study of medieval mysticism, early medieval Welsh and Irish spirituality, and contemporary Systematic Theology. He presently works in the fields of neuroscience, theology and social transformation. Davies is the originator together with Paul Janz and Clemens Sedmak of ‘Transformation Theology’. Since 2004 he has held the chair of Christian Doctrine at King's College London, as a Roman Catholic layman. He is founding director of the Centre for Social Transformation at King's College London, which specializes in the development of 'global' or 'ecumenical' understandings of the self in the light of comparative philosophy, traditional philosophies and new advances in the neurology of social cognition.
Samuel Martin Bailey Wells is an English priest of the Church of England. Since 2012, he has been the vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields in central London, and Visiting Professor of Christian Ethics at King's College London. In 2018, he was installed as Honorary Canon Theologian of Guildford Cathedral.
Michael Stafford Northcott is Professor Emeritus of Ethics at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He is best known for his contributions to environmental theology and ethics.
Paul T Nimmo is a Scottish theologian who holds the position of King’s Chair of Systematic Theology at the University of Aberdeen.
William Schweiker is an American theological ethicist. He is the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on globalization as an ethical problem, hermeneutic philosophy, theological humanism, the history of ethics, and comparative religious ethics.
John Swinton, is a Scottish theologian, academic, and Presbyterian minister. He is the Chair in Divinity and Religious Studies at the School of Divinity, History, and Philosophy, University of Aberdeen. John is founder of the university's Centre for Spirituality, Health and Disability.
David Lennard Clough is a British author and academic with a focus on the Christian vegetarian and Christian vegan movements. He is Professor in Theology and Applied Sciences at the University of Aberdeen and a Methodist preacher. He is also the founder and a co-director of the CreatureKind project which focuses on the welfare of farmed animals as a faith issue.
Jonathan Tran is a Vietnamese-American theologian, and currently holds the George W. Baines Chair of Religion at Baylor University.
Philip G. Ziegler is a Canadian-born theologian who holds a personal chair as Professor in Christian Dogmatics at the University of Aberdeen. He is author of numerous scholarly articles, books, and has led various research projects within contemporary dogmatics, the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as theological reflection on New Testament apocalyptic. He maintains a personal website: Theologia Borealis.
Michael Mawson is the Maclaurin Goodfellow Associate Professor of Theological and Religious Studies at University of Auckland, a post that has previously been held by Elaine Wainwright and Joseph Bulbulia. He is an international expert on the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and has published widely in the area of Christian Ethics.