About

I'm an Associate Research Scholar and the director of the Life Worth Living program at the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School and a Lecturer of Divinity and Humanities at Yale University. I also serve on the church council at the Elm City Vineyard Church (ECV), a dynamic, diverse, urban church I helped plant in 2007 and where I served as lead pastor for six years. 

I received my B.A. in Music from Yale College and an M.A.R. in Bible from Yale Divinity School. After the Divinity degree, Hannah and I spent a summer at the Akrofi-Christaller Institute in Akropong-Akuapem, Ghana, studying with the great African theologian, Kwame Bediako, whose work has profoundly impacted the way I see theology and culture. I then returned to Yale for my Ph.D. in Religious Studies (New Testament), which I completed in 2014.

My deepest passion is for teaching. I believe education should help us learn, most of all, what it means to be human and how to discern the nature of true life. The Life Worth Living program, which I direct, does exactly this, inviting students to marry their most pressing existential questions with the very best of their intellectual energies, equipping them for the lifelong process of discerning the good life.

My core research interests lie in the Pauline Epistles, illuminated by various streams of contemporary philosophy of science, theological reflection, and critical theory. I was a recipient of the 2015 Manfred Lautenschläger Award for Theological Promise for my   dissertation, “The Body of Sin: An Emergent Account of Sin as a Cosmic Power in Romans 5-8.” My first book, The Emergence of Sin (OUP, 2017), is a revision of that work. As central and enduring as my interest is in Paul, my interests extend beyond the Pauline epistles. My current writing projects have me working in theological methodology, humanistic pedagogy, and inter-religious dialogue.

In addition to planting and pastoring ECV, I've been privileged to serve the Vineyard movement of churches in helping found and steer the Society of Vineyard Scholars, directing the first-ever Vineyard Seminarian Summit, and consulting with Vineyard leaders and pastors in the U.S. and Canada. I love to teach in the church and have taught in Vineyard, Covenant, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal and non-denominational churches in the United States, Dominican Republic, Switzerland, Germany, and Ghana. 

In everything I do, I'm always thinking about what's happening at the boundaries between various groups. From the very beginning, ECV was planted in hopes that it would grow to become a truly multiethnic and multi-class community—a dream that we see coming to be in our midst. At the university, the program I direct leads students into profound inter-religious encounters as they interact with visions of the good life from Buddhism to Islam to Utilitarianism to Nietzsche. ECV has long been intentionally invested in building bridges with the Muslim community in our city. As part of this effort, I've helped facilitate sacred text readings of the New Testament and Quran in partnership with a local mosque. I also serve as a faculty advisor for the Yale Humanist Community and the Life Worth Living Fellows.

My wife, Hannah, and I live in New Haven, CT with our daughter, Junia. As I have from a young age, I love playing and writing music. Soccer, squash, and basketball keep me active.

If you're interested in hearing more from my path through ministry, academia, and pluralism, check out this podcast episode from Duke Divinity School's Faith & Leadership, "Can These Bones?" with Laura Everett and Bill Lamar. (Transcript available here.)