The GTU is proud to present the 2003-04 Presidential Scholars. The academic excellence and creativity of these doctoral students promise to embody the best of the GTU’s tradition of bold and innovative scholarship.

Jennifer Davidson
Liturgical Studies
Davidson is interested in liturgical renewal ecumenically and in her own American Baptist free-church tradition, particularly in exploring repetition and ritual. She is a contributing editor for “The Other Side,” and has worked as a chaplain for a Women's Studies program and as a teacher. Her future goal is to teach in a seminary. “I would love to communicate the love of worship, even more than the ‘stuff’ of worship. I want people to fall in love with worship, and out of that love to desire excellence.” Davidson comments that receiving a presidential scholarship, which made it possible for her to enroll in the doctoral program, reminds her that “my responsibility in studying is not just to myself, but to my community.”

Rebecca Gordon
Ethics & Social Theory
Gordon is focusing on the ethical, social, theological and technical questions surrounding the issue of human access to food and water. Her interest “stems in part from the fact that it is women who produce and prepare the world's food. Many women's lives are all but consumed in that labor. Theologically, my focus is the centrality of the Eucharist in Christian liturgical practice. The Eucharist is at heart a shared meal, but unlike ‘ordinary’ or profane meals, this ‘sacred’ meal is one in which the work of women has become invisible.” Her background includes an M.Div. from Starr King School for the Ministry, extensive work as an analyst and author on issues of race and social justice, and experience as a volunteer on peace and justice projects from California to Nicaragua and South Africa. Gordon says that receiving a presidential scholarship “has made all the difference in being able to really focus on my studies. There’s nothing like being a doctoral student to give you a sense of what finitude is all about!”

 DooHee Lee
Biblical Studies
Lee received an M.A. from Seoul National University, an M.Div. from the Presbyterian College and Theological Seminary in Seoul, and a Th.M. from Princeton Theological Seminary. His languages include Latin, Greek, German, French and Korean, and he has also studied Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic. Here at the GTU Lee plans to explore the relationship between the New Testament and the Greco-Roman world. Noting that Christianity did not originate in a vacuum, he believes that New Testament studies cannot be limited to works found in the Bible itself, but must extend to an examination of the surrounding cultures and religions. To facilitate his exploration of the emergence of Christianity, he plans to learn Syriac and Coptic and to study Jewish literature and traditions.

 Manhong Lin
Interdisciplinary Studies
Lin is the first woman officially sent by the China Christian Council (a national umbrella organization of Protestant churches in China) to enroll in a Ph.D. program overseas. When she completes her program at the GTU, she will teach at Nanjing Union Theological Seminary, the national seminary in China, and help establish a doctoral program there. At the GTU, she is focusing on Christian ethics, Chinese cultural studies, and the history of Chinese Christian thought. In her dissertation, Lin plans to explore how the Protestant churches in China can play a more constructive role in Chinese society in questions of social morality, through an appropriation of the legacy of Christian ethics. Lin hopes to complete her studies here in three and a half years and return to China, where her husband (who is an ordained minister) and four-year-old daughter are waiting for her.

 Joseph Pietrangelo
Christian Spirituality
Pietrangelo received an M.A. in education from Notre Dame, and went on to spend two years discerning a vocation to religious life and priesthood before deciding to enter the GTU’s doctoral program. American culture and literature are two of his primary interests, and he points to sacramentality—“how we apprehend God’s presence in the world”—as lying at the heart of the creative process. “Certain pieces of writing can grab us, transform us,” he says, naming Gerard Manley Hopkins, Walker Percy, and James Agee as writers who have meant the most to him. Now writing a paper in which he is drawing on ideas from Simone Weil, C.S. Lewis, and Percy, Pietrangelo is struck by “having the freedom in the GTU program to explore my main interests right off the bat!”

 Jennifer Veninga
Systematic and Philosophical Theology
Veninga, who will begin the doctoral program in spring 2004, comments that she is drawn to the GTU for its “open and interfaith spirit of scholarship.” She earned her B.A. from Southern Methodist University, an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, and has also studied in Denmark. Veninga’s interest is in Christian theological anthropology—reflection upon what it means to be human, and how humans can better relate to one another. She comments that Kierkegaard, one of her sources of inspiration and challenge, “keeps coming back into my life again and again. His driving question is what it really means to live authentically, in relation to God.” Her community service experience includes work with Amnesty International and interfaith and environmental work in Ireland and India.

 Lisa Webster
Interdisciplinary Studies
Webster holds an M.A. in comparative literature from Columbia University. She worked in publishing for a number of years, and returned to school in order to answer some of her longstanding questions about the relationships between literature and religion, especially mystical writing and narratives of conversion. She was drawn to the GTU out of a desire to study in a context of critical alertness to the demarcation of the disciplines in religious studies, and in an environment of “people who are training to be religious leaders. I wanted a religious framework for my studies.” Webster’s work brings methods of literary criticism to the analysis of religious language, particularly patterns in Jewish and Christian mystical literature; her current focus is on the rhetoric of religious autobiography. Her language studies include French, Latin, Hebrew and Italian.

 Emily Wu
Cultural & Historical Studies of Religions
Wu received an M.A. from Boston University, where she studied the phenomenon of feng shui consultants. At the GTU she is expanding the focus of her work to include how Chinese-American communities are reacting to the adoption of traditional healing practices by the broader American society. She plans to study immigrant Chinese practitioners and non-Chinese practitioners, analyzing the influences of cultural backgrounds on their perception of the healing practices. She argues that religious elements, although not institutionalized, account for some of the attraction these ancient customs have for non-Chinese. Wu is particularly excited about the GTU's relationship with University of California, Berkeley, and the opportunity it affords her to gain experience in anthropological fieldwork.

Each year eight applicants to the GTU doctoral program are offered presidential scholarships. Merit-based, these scholarships offer two years of full tuition and a stipend. Presidential Scholars have the added support that enables them to complete the program more quickly and to engage in professional activities such as presenting papers at conferences and publishing articles in academic journals. The GTU is committed to increasing our ability to provide supportive scholarship program. To learn about ways to advance the GTU’s vision of education for theological scholarship and ministerial leadership, please contact the advancement office at 510/649-2420.

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