2018 Summer Guest Preachers

Duke Chapel welcomes several guest preacher to the pulpit this summer. See the Chapel's calendar for a full schedule of worship services, including dates when Chapel Dean Luke A. Powery and other Chapel staff will preach. A recent archive of services is available on the Chapel website and a podcast of sermons is available on iTunes. Duke Libraries' maintains the Duke Chapel Recordings collection.


May 20, 2018 — Rev. Satoru Itoh

Satoru Itoh

The Rev. Satoru Itoh has been a university chaplain and professor of Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan, since 2002. The university was founded by Methodist missionaries in 1874 and is one of the oldest Christian universities in Japan. Currently, the Rev. Itoh is a visiting scholar at Duke Divinity School. He is ordained in the United Church of Christ in Japan. He is an executive board member of The Japan Christian Education Society, the chair of the Christian School Teacher Applicants Training Program Committee and the Teacher's License Renewal Program Committee in Association of Christian Schools in Japan, and the director of the board of Child Fund Japan (NGO). He is the author and editor of several Japanese books such as Shaken by God (1996), Christian Universities in Japan: Its Mission and Issues (2011), and Salt of the Earth, Light of the World (2006).

Video Webcast.

 


June 24, 2018 — Dr. Jacqueline Lapsley

Jacqueline E. Lapsley is associate professor of Old Testament, and director of The Center for Theology, Women, and Gender at Princeton Theological Seminary. She earned her MA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, her MDiv from Princeton Seminary, and her PhD from Emory University. Dr. Lapsley is interested in literary theory, ethics (especially creation ethics), theological anthropology, and gender theory, as tools for reading the Old Testament theologically. Her courses cover gender theory, and creation ethics in the Old Testament. Her current research and writing focuses on the relationship between human dignity and creational dignity. She is the co-author of Bible and Ethics in the Christian Life (Fortress Press, 2018). She edited the “Gender and Method” issue of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel (2016), and is co-editor (with Patricia K. Tull) of After Exegesis: Feminist Biblical Theology (2015), and A Women’s Bible Commentary, 3rd edition (2012, with C. Newsom and S. Ringe). She serves on the editorial boards of The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel, and the new Interpretation Commentary Series (with co-editors Brian Blount, Beverly Gaventa, and Samuel Adams). Lapsley is an ordained Presbyterian elder and teaches and preaches in congregations.

Video webcast


July 15, 2018 — Rev. Dr. Rodney Sadler

Rodney S. Sadler Jr. is an associate professor of Bible at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Rev. Dr. Sadler’s teaching experience includes courses in biblical languages, Old and New Testament interpretation, wisdom literature in the Bible, the history and religion of ancient Israel, and African American biblical interpretation. His first authored book, Can A Cushite Change His Skin? An Examination of Race, Ethnicity, and Othering in the Hebrew Bible, was published in 2005. He frequently lectures within the church and community on Race in the Bible, African American Biblical Interpretation, the Image of Jesus, Biblical Archaeology, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. He was the managing editor of the African American Devotional Bible. Dr. Sadler served as a visiting lecturer and interim co-director of the Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School and was an associate minister in Durham, North Carolina.
 

July 22, 2018 — Rev. Dr. Stephen Chapman

A proponent of theological interpretation, Professor Chapman is an associate professor of Old Testament at Duke Divinity School. He has studied, lectured, and taught internationally in a variety of academic and church settings. The Rev. Dr. Chapman's work focuses on the formation of the biblical canon, the nature of the Old Testament as scripture, the dynamics of biblical narrative, the challenge of biblical violence, and the history and use of the Old Testament within the Christian tradition and Western culture. He is the author of 1 Samuel as Christian Scripture (2016) and The Law and the Prophets (2000), as well as numerous essays. He co-edited The Cambridge Companion to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (2016) and Biblischer Text und theologische Theoriebildung (2001). He is an affiliate faculty member with Duke’s Center for Jewish Studies and Director of Graduate Studies for Duke’s PhD program in religion. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Theological Interpretation and the monograph series Siphrut: Literature and Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures (Eisenbrauns). He is also an ordained American Baptist minister. His current project is a book on The Theology of Joshua for Cambridge University Press.
 

July 29, 2018 — Rev. Dr. Leslie Callahan

The Rev. Dr. Leslie D. Callahan serves as the pastor of St. Paul's Baptist Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Installed as the pastor in 2009, the Rev. Dr. Callahan is the church’s first female pastor. She began the public proclamation of the gospel at age 19, and earned a BA in Religion from Harvard University/Radcliffe, a MDiv from Union Theological Seminary, and PhD in Religion from Princeton University. She was ordained in 1997 at Judson Memorial Church and served as minister of Christian education at the First Baptist Church of Princeton, New Jersey. She also served as interim pastor of Salem Baptist Church of Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. A gifted professor, she has served on the faculty of New York Theological Seminary (NYTS) as assistant professor of modern church history and African American studies. Prior to her time at NYTS, she was a member of the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania as assistant professor of religious studies.

In addition to her ministry and scholarly pursuits, the Rev. Dr. Callahan enjoys traveling, golfing, reading, movies, and sports. She is also an active member of the Philadelphia Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Her chief joy is that she is the proud mother of Annabelle Inez. Her favorite scripture is Psalm 27:4. 

Video webcast


August 12, 2018 — Dr. Marlene Ringgaard Lorensen

Dr. Marlene Ringgaard Lorensen is a professor of practical theology with special obligations in homiletics at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She has a PhD in homiletics and spent a year as a visiting scholar at Duke Divinity School in 2012-13. Dr. Lorensen’s research and teaching includes the history and theology of preaching as well as field studies of refugees’ encounters with Christianity and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark. Dr. Lorensen’s publications include: “The Complexity of Survival: Asylum Seekers, Resilience and Religion” (2018), “Listening to the voices: refugees as co-authors of practical theology” (2018) (co-written with Gitte Buch-Hansen), and Dialogical Preaching: Bakhtin, Otherness and Homiletics (2014). She is co-editor of the International Journal of the Homiletics and serves as a member of the board of Societas Homiletica, an international society of scholars of preaching. She is mother of Lukas, Freja and Markus and married to Peter Lorensen, who taught computer science at Duke University—also as a visiting scholar in 2012–13.

Video webcast


August 19, 2018 — Dr. Thea Portier-Young

Dr. Anathea Portier-Young earned her PhD in Religion/Hebrew Bible at Duke University, where she has also taught Old Testament and Hebrew Bible for more than 15 years. She holds a BA in Classics from Yale and MA in Biblical Languages from Graduate Theological Union. She is an expert in early Jewish literature and in gender, sexuality, and the body in the literature of the Old Testament. Her book, Apocalypse against Empire, Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism, received the Manfred Lautenschlaeger award for theological promise. Her current book project, Prophecy in the Body, argues that biblical prophecy is portrayed as an embodied phenomenon that cannot be reduced to word or utterance. She is co-editor with Gregory Sterling of a book in press entitled Scripture and Justice: Catholic and Ecumenical Perspectives. She is a frequent contributor to Workingpreacher.org.