Source List for Journalists
This listing provides some of the areas in which MTSO faculty members are available to offer authoritative context for news stories. For assistance contacting a faculty member or for help locating an expert in a topic you don’t see listed, contact Communications Director Danny Russell at 740-362-3322 or drussell@mtso.edu.
Valerie Bridgeman
Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Associate Professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible
Biblical interpretation – comparisons of different Christian sects
Evangelicalism – a former evangelical’s perspective
Politics and faith
Social justice – the intersection of Black Lives Matter and other movements with faith
Jeffrey Jaynes
Professor in the Warner Chair of Church History
Evil – the nature of personal and institutional evil
Genocide and religion – including comparisons of contemporary instances to the Holocaust
Global Christianity – how global expressions of Christianity intersect with Western Christianity
Maps and territories – particularly Medieval maps
John Kampen
Professor in the Dunn Chair in Biblical Interpretation
Antisemitism and the Bible
Dead Sea Scrolls
Israel/Palestine – Christian views
Jewish-Christian Relations
Paul Kim
Professor of Hebrew Bible in the Williams Chair of Biblical Studies
Asian and Asian-American biblical interpretation
Far East Asian culture and politics – current issues in North and South Korea
Immigration, exile and diaspora –contemporary issues through the lens of ancient biblical exile
Prophetic literature – origins, roles and implications of prophets in the Bible
Linda Mercadante
Professor of Theology in the Straker Chair of Historical Theology
Belief – the history and changing face of believing
Domestic violence and religion
Faith and film – spiritual issues and echoes
Spiritual but not religious – the movement, people, beliefs, demographics, politics and culture of so-called “nones”
Elaine Nogueira-Godsey
Assistant Professor of Theology, Ecology and Race
Environmental justice – intersections of race, gender, class and environmental destruction
Ecofeminist theology – feminist and ecofeminist theories, gender studies and sexuality
Justice and race – postcolonial theory and theology, and decolonial pedagogical praxis
Religion education in South Africa and Brazil
Paul Numrich
Professor in the Snowden Chair for the Study of Religion and Interreligious Relations
American religious diversity – including immigrant religious groups and new religious movements
Health care and religion – dietary rules and beliefs about death and dying
Interreligious relations – from dialogue to violence
Space-sharing by religious organizations – for instance, immigrant congregations worshiping in established church buildings
Ryan Schellenberg
Assistant Professor of New Testament
Early Christian economics – how Jesus, Paul, and other early Christians talked about money
Mass incarceration – how ancient Christians responded to imprisonment, and how contemporary Christians might follow their lead
Christian Gospels – where the New Testament Gospels came from and the nature of their stories about Jesus
Christian/Jewish relations – the early history of their interrelationship and eventual separation
Lisa Withrow
Dewire Professor of Christian Leadership
Conflict management and transformation in groups and organizations
Leadership development
Polarization and power
Religious organizational development
Yvonne Zimmerman
Associate Academic Dean
Associate Professor of Christian Ethics
Human trafficking – issues with and progressive alternatives to the mainstream anti-trafficking movement
Religion and society – the roles religion plays in movements for social change
Gender and sexuality – policies and practices related to gender, sexuality and sexual ethics
LGBTQ+ life – issues related to queer and gender non-conforming people's lives and wellbeing