Todd Penner

Religion matters a great deal in our world, and the serious matter of studying religion provides an opportunity for understanding who we are as humans, individually and in community, for better and for worse, with the hope of exploring more sustainable and just futures in this world and the next.

I have a Ph.D. from Emory University (2000), and I have also studied at the University of Manitoba, the University of Winnipeg, and Providence College and Seminary. My specific field of training is in New Testament and Christian Origins, and I have broad interests in modern interpretations of the Bible, method and theory in the study of religion, and cultural study of religion in the modern world. I am fascinated by how modern interests and ways of thinking shape the way we view the past. This particular theme is explored more fully in my latest book -- De-Introducing the New Testament: Texts, Worlds, Methods, Stories (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015) -- co-written with Davina Lopez of Eckerd College.

In my forthcoming book, Acts of the Imagination: Making Early Christian History (Fortress Press), I assess the complexity, ambiguity, and at times contradictory nature of the historical process and modern analysis of it. My work encourages humanists to engage more fully in imaginative projects that would entail utilizing principles from, say, quantum physics, where disorder and contradiction are often the order of things. I explore how thinking beyond disciplinary boundaries challenges us in the process of challenging our paradigms of the past.