Three institutions with Baptist ties have announced new leadership appointments.
Baptist ethicist David Gushee will head up a new effort by Mercer University in Macon, Ga., to foster what the school calls “theologically based discussions on current issues and controversies.”
Gail O’Day, a New Testament scholar and ordained United Church of Christ minister, has been tapped to replace Baptist historian Bill Leonard as dean of Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, N.C.
And Andrew Wakefield has been named dean of the Campbell University Divinity School in Buies Creek, N.C., where he has served on the faculty since 1997.
Gushee will be director of the Mercer Center for Theology and Public Life, which will sponsor events at both Mercer’s Atlanta graduate campus — where Gushee teaches and home to Mercer’s McAfee School of Theology — and the main campus in Macon.
“This will help enhance something that is very distinctive about Mercer, and that is the exploration of all perspectives in the context of freedom of inquiry,” Gushee said.
“We don’t have the constraints of either a strictly secular environment or rigidly conservative environment, and in that sense, we’re an ideal host for this,” he continued. “There is so much about the issues of the day that is missed by those environments. In a strictly secular environment, the idea is that religion doesn’t matter and, in the rigidly conservative environment, there is the idea that only our view matters. But, in fact, we know that religion matters, and that there are many significant perspectives from many different viewpoints.”
O’Day currently is senior associate dean of faculty and academic affairs and the A.H. Shatford Professor of New Testament and Preaching at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. She will become dean and professor of New Testament and preaching at Wake Forest on Aug. 1.
Leonard, 64, founding dean of the divinity school, is stepping down June 30 because of a tradition at the university establishing a 10-year tenure for deans. He will remain on the faculty as chair of church history in the divinity school and the university’s religion department.
O’Day is a world-renowned scholar for research on the Gospel of John, the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, the Bible and preaching and the history of biblical interpretation.
Opened in 1999, Wake Forest divinity school has from the beginning been known for its interdisciplinary approach, described as “Christian by tradition, ecumenical in outlook and Baptist in heritage.”
Wake Forest University President Nathan Hatch described O’Day — who holds an undergraduate degree from Brown University, a master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School and a doctorate from Emory — as “the perfect leader to steward that balance.”
Wakefield, who currently holds the Lewis Edward and Martha Barnes Tyner Chair of Bible at Campbell’s divinity school, will succeed founding dean Michael Cogdill on July 1.
Wakefield is a graduate of Wake Forest University and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and holds a doctorate in New Testament from Duke University.
Campbell University President Jerry M. Wallace said, “In assuming the role, [Wakefield] brings a sterling academic record, a deep commitment to ministry, and years of demonstrated excellence within the school itself. Andy is an extraordinarily talented individual whose range of skills will, no doubt, propel the school upward from the significant achievements of its first fourteen years.”