A pastor is the leader of a Christian congregation who also gives advice and counsel to people from the community or congregation. In Lutheranism, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy and Anglicanism, pastors are always ordained. In Methodism, pastors may be either licensed or ordained.
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York is a private ecumenical liberal Christian seminary in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, affiliated with Columbia University. Columbia University lists UTS among its affiliate schools, alongside Barnard College and Teachers College. Since 1928, the seminary has served as Columbia's constituent faculty of theology. In 1964, UTS also established an affiliation with the neighboring Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Despite its affiliation with Columbia University, UTS is an independent institution with its own administration and Board of Trustees. UTS confers the following degrees: Master of Divinity (MDiv), Master of Divinity & Social Work dual degree (MDSW), Master of Arts in religion (MAR), Master of Arts in Social Justice (MASJ), Master of Sacred Theology (STM), Doctor of Ministry (DMin), and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).
Edmund Prosper Clowney was an American theologian, educator, and pastor.
Marilyn McCord Adams was an American philosopher and Episcopal priest. She specialized in the philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, and medieval philosophy. She was Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology at Yale Divinity School from 1998 to 2003 and Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford from 2004 to 2009.
James Martin Gray was a pastor in the Reformed Episcopal Church, a Bible scholar, editor, hymn writer, and the president of Moody Bible Institute, 1904-34.
The Vanderbilt Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion is an interdenominational divinity school at Vanderbilt University, a major research university located in Nashville, Tennessee. It is one of only six university-based schools of religion in the United States without a denominational affiliation that service primarily mainline Protestantism.
Klyne Ryland Snodgrass is an American theologian and author, who served as professor of New Testament Studies at the North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois from 1974 to 2015. His publication Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus garnered a 2009 Christianity Today Book Award.
Reginald Horace Fuller was an English-American biblical scholar, ecumenist, and Anglican priest. His works are recognized for their consequential analysis of New Testament Christology. One aspect of his work is on the relation of Jesus to the early church and the church today. For this, his analysis, which uses the historical-critical method, has been described as neo-orthodox.
George Ernest Wright, was a leading Old Testament scholar and biblical archaeologist. An expert in Ancient Near Eastern archaeology, he was especially known for his work in the study and dating of pottery. He was associated with the biblical theology movement.
Andrew Keith Malcolm Adam, known as A. K. M. Adam, is a biblical scholar, theologian, author, priest, technologist and blogger. He is Tutor in New Testament and Greek at St. Stephen's House at Oxford University. He is a writer, speaker, voice-over artist, and activist on topics including postmodern philosophy, hermeneutics, education, and the social constitution of meaning.
Anne Katherine "Kathy" Grieb is an American biblical scholar and Episcopal priest. She has taught New Testament at Virginia Theological Seminary since 1994, and is currently Meade Professor in Biblical Interpretation. She previously taught at Bangor Theological Seminary in Maine.
Philip Edgcumbe Hughes (1915–1990) was an Anglican clergyman and New Testament scholar whose life spanned four continents: Australia, where he was born; South Africa, where he spent his formative years; England, where he was ordained; and the United States, where he died in 1990, aged 75.
David Lyon Bartlett was the J. Edward and Ruth Cox Lantz Professor Emeritus of Christian Communication at Yale Divinity School, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, and an ordained minister of the American Baptist Churches, USA.
Wilbur Moorehead Smith (1894–1976) was an American theologian and one of the founding members of Fuller Theological Seminary.
Gale A. Yee is an American scholar of the Hebrew Bible. Her primary emphases are postcolonial criticism, ideological criticism, and cultural criticism. She applies feminist frameworks to biblical texts. An American of Chinese descent, she has written frequently on biblical interpretation from an Asian American perspective. She is the first woman of color to be President of the Society of Biblical Literature.
Gail Radcliffe O'Day was an American biblical scholar.
Earl Frank Palmer was an American Presbyterian minister and Reverend. He served in pastoral ministries at University Presbyterian Church in Seattle, Union Church in Manila, First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, and The National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. Palmer was known for his expositional preaching and teaching style. He had a strong interest in pursuing theological themes that are present in classic and contemporary literature, with focus on authors such as C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Karl Barth, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Palmer wrote over 20 books, and served on the boards of Princeton Theological Seminary, New College Berkeley, Whitworth University and Regent College.
The Very Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas is an African-American Episcopal priest, womanist theologian, and interim president of Episcopal Divinity School. She was previously the inaugural Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary. She became interim president when EDS departed from Union in 2023. She is also the Canon Theologian at the Washington National Cathedral. She has written seven books, including The Black Christ (1994), Black Bodies and Black Church: A Blues Slant (2012), Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (2015), and Resurrection Hope: A Future Where Black Lives Matter (2021). Her book Sexuality in the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective (1999) was groundbreaking for openly addressing homophobia within the Black Church.
Christianity is a central theme in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional works about Middle-earth, but the specifics are always kept hidden. This allows for the books' meaning to be personally interpreted by the reader, instead of the author detailing a strict, set meaning.
J. R. R. Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, embodied Christianity in his legendarium, including The Lord of the Rings. Light is a prominent motif in Christianity: it is the first thing created by God in the Book of Genesis, it symbolizes God's grace and blessings elsewhere in the Old Testament, and it is closely associated with both Jesus and humanity itself in the Gospel of John in the New Testament.
