The Farminary's 10th Anniversary

Rev. Dr. Willie James Jennings

Willie James Jennings is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale Divinity School. Jennings is a theologian who teaches in the areas of Christian thought, race theory, decolonial and environmental studies. Dr. Jennings is the author of the forthcoming Reframing the World: A Christian Doctrine of Creation (Yale University Press). He is also the author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race published by Yale University Press and recipient of the 2010 American Academy of Religion Book of the Year in the Constructive- Reflective Studies category. It is one of the most important books in theology written in the last 25 years and is now a standard text read in colleges, seminaries, and universities. Dr. Jennings is also the recipient of the 2015 Grawemeyer Award in Religion for his groundbreaking work on race and Christianity. Dr. Jennings’s commentary on the Book of Acts won the Reference Book of the Year Award, from The Academy of Parish Clergy. He is also the author of After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging, which was the inaugural book in the much-anticipated book series, Theological Education between the Times, and has already become an instant classic, winning the 2020 book of the year award from Publisher’s Weekly. It was also selected as a finalist for the 2021 American Academy of Religion Book of the Year in the Constructive- Reflective Studies category, and in 2023 won the Lilly Fellows Program Book Award. Dr. Willie James Jennings is an ordained Baptist minister and has served as interim pastor for several North Carolina churches. A Calvin College graduate, Jennings received his M.Div. from Fuller Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in religion and ethics from Duke.

Dr. Norman Wirzba

Norman Wirzba is Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology & Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute of Ethics at Duke University. He is the author of This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World. His research and teaching interests are at the intersections of theology, philosophy, ecology, and agrarian and environmental studies. Raised on a farm in Southern Alberta, Norman went on to study history at the University of Lethbridge, theology at Yale University Divinity School, and philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. Since then he has taught at Saint Thomas More College/University of Saskatchewan, Georgetown College (KY), and Duke University Divinity School.

Tink Tinker

A member of the faculty at the Iliff School of Theology since 1985, Tink Tinker teaches courses in American Indian cultures, history, and religious traditions; cross-cultural and Third-World theologies; and justice and peace studies and is a frequent speaker on these topics both in the U.S. and internationally. His publications include American Indian Liberation: A Theology of Sovereignty (2008); Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation (2004); and Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Genocide (1993). He co-authored A Native American Theology (2001); and he is co-editor of Native Voices: American Indian Identity and Resistance (2003), and Fortress Press’ Peoples’ Bible (2008).

Dr. Tinker has volunteered in the Indian community as (non–stipendiary) director of Four Winds American Indian Survival Project in Denver for two decades. In that capacity he functions in the urban Indian community as a traditional American Indian spiritual leader. He is past president of the Native American Theological Association and a member of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians.

Firmly committed to the ecumenical movement, he has been active in volunteer capacities with several denominations at the national level, the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. He currently serves as an “Honorary Advisor” to IMADR, the International Movement against all Forms of Discrimination and Racism; and he also serves locally on the Leadership Council of the American Indian Movement of Colorado.

Hanna Reichel

Hanna Reichel is Charles Hodge Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. Reichel earned their Dr. theol. in Systematic Theology from Heidelberg University, Germany, after an MDiv in Theology and a BSc in Economics. Prior to coming to Princeton, they taught at Heidelberg University and Halle-Wittenberg University in Germany.

Reichel co-chairs AAR’s Christian Systematic Theology unit and is a member of the steering committee of AAR’s Reformed History and Theology unit as well as of the Karl Barth Society of North America and the annual International Karl Barth Conference in Switzerland. Reichel co-edits Brill’s Studies in Systematic Theology series and Routledge’s Karl Barth Studies series and chairs Princeton Theological Seminary’s Center for Barth Studies advisory board. A ruling elder in the PC (USA), Reichel also serves on the Theology Working Group of the World Communion of Reformed Churches, currently preparing the General Council meeting 2025 in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Reichel’s first book Theologie als Bekenntnis: Karl Barths kontextuelle Lektüre des Heidelberger Katechismus reframes Barth as a contextual theologian through his repeated engagements with this Reformed confession over the course of his life. The book received the Lautenschläger Award for Theological Promise and the Ernst Wolf Award. Reichel’s second book, After Method: Queer Grace, Conceptual Design, and the Possibility of Theology argues based on both Reformed and queer-theological grounds that “method cannot save theology.” That does not mean, however, that method has no use. Rather, understanding the work of theology as that of conceptual design – responsibly ordering and structuring given materials for a purpose – theologians are invited to an equally more demanding and more capacious practice. The result is an ethic of theology that is continually called to do justice to the reality of God and the world rather than conform to doctrinal orthodoxy or methodological orthopraxy.

Reichel’s teaching spans doctrine and political theology, with special interests in Christology, theological anthropology, eschatology, the doctrine of God, and theological epistemology, with liberationist and queer-feminist commitments. Reichel is currently working on two monograph-length projects: Against Humanity takes a critical inventory of different theological conceptions of the human being (created in the image of God, defined by the humanity of God in Christ, designated to be God’s covenant partner… ), in light of recent antihumanisms in decolonial, Black, queer, crip, and ecological studies. Political Theologies of Omniscience analyzes contemporary surveillance cultures through a doctrinal lens, developing a typology of disciplining, performing, controlling, and replicating surveillance in conversation with historical debates on divine omniscience relating to eschatology, election, providence, and creation.

An internationally renowned scholar, Reichel’s work has also been featured in public outlets such as The Atlantic, the Presbyterian Foundation’s Leading Theologically, CTI’s Theology Matters, and Tripp Fuller’s Homebrewed Christianity.

Select Publications

• • Karl Barth, in: Ford’s The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology since 1918, eds. Rachel Muers and Ashley Cocksworth with David F. Ford, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2024, 140—151.
  • After Method: Queer Grace, Conceptual Design, and the Possibility of Theology, Louisville: WJK, 2023.
  • On Theology and Design, in: Journal of Systematic Theology 3/3 (2023), 1—18.
  • Of Gods and Men, and Wolves: The “Other Question” between Projection, Colonial Imagination, and Liberation, in: Karl Barth and the Future of Liberation Theology, eds. Paul D. Jones and Kaitlyn Dugan, London: T&T Clark, 2023, 33—54.
  • The End of Humanity and the Beginning of Kenosis, in: The Doctrine of Kenosis, eds. Keith L. Johnson and Paul T. Nimmo, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022, 289–309.
  • Swords to Plowshares: On Doing Election, in: Stellenbosch Theological Journal 8/1, (2022), 1–14.
  • Conceptual Design, Sin and the Affordances of Doctrine, in: International Journal of Systematic Theology 22/4 (2020), 538–561.
  • Toward a Distributed Theology: Citizen Science, the Body of Christ, and Testimonial Epistemology, in: Ecumenical Review 72/2 (2020), 223–241 (co-authored with Thomas Renkert and Benedikt Friedrich).
  • Worldmaking knowledge: What the doctrine of omniscience can help us understand about digitization, in: Cursor_ Zeitschrift fuer explorative Theologie 3 (2019).
  • With Laura-Christin Krannich and Dirk Evers (eds.): Menschenbilder und Gottesbilder. Geschlecht in theologischer Reflexion, Leipzig: EVA, 2019.
  • Theologie als Bekenntnis. Karl Barths kontextuelle Lektüre des Heidelberger Katechismus (FSÖTh 149), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2015.

Jeff Chu

Jeff Chu is an award-winning journalist and editor-at-large at Travel+Leisure. His most recent book is Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand, a profound meditation on nature, heritage, and belonging, from an accomplished journalist who left New York City for life on a working farm – the Farminary. He is also the author of Does Jesus Really Love Me? and the co-author, with the late Rachel Held Evans, of the New York Times bestseller Wholehearted Faith. Chu is a former Time staff writer and Fast Company editor whose work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Modern Farmer. In his weekly newsletter, “Notes of a Make-Believe Farmer,” Chu writes about spirituality, gardening, food, travel, and culture. He lives with his husband, Tristan, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Michael W. Twitty

Michael W. Twitty is a noted culinary and cultural historian and the creator of Afroculinaria, the first blog devoted to African American historic foodways and their legacies. He has been honored by FirstWeFeast.com as one of the twenty greatest food bloggers of all time, and named one of the “Fifty People Who Are Changing the South” by Southern Living and one of the “Five Cheftavists to Watch” by TakePart.com. He is the author of Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew and The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South. Twitty has appeared throughout the media, including on NPR’s The Splendid Table, and has given more than 250 talks in the United States and abroad. His work has appeared in Ebony, the Guardian, and on NPR.org. He is also a Smith fellow with the Southern Foodways Alliance, a TED fellow and speaker, and the first Revolutionary in Residence at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Nate Stucky, Director of the Farminary Project

Nathan Stucky serves as Director of the Farminary Project at Princeton Theological Seminary. He grew up on a farm in Kansas where his love for Christian faith and agriculture first took root. After earning a BA in Music from Bethel College (KS), Stucky spent six years doing ecumenical youth ministry on the eastern shore of Maryland, and two years farming back in Kansas. After farming, Stucky earned an MDiv and a PhD (Practical Theology, Christian Education and Formation) from Princeton Theological Seminary. His scholarship explores questions of land, ecology, theology, agriculture, justice, joy, and Sabbath as they relate to theological education. He is the author of Wrestling with Rest: Inviting Youth to Discover the Gift of Sabbath. Ordained in the Mennonite Church (USA), Stucky engages Farminary work as integral to his calling to teaching ministry. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with his spouse and three children.

Dr. Tiya Miles

Tiya Miles is the author of eight books, including four prize-winning histories about race and slavery in the American past. Her latest work is the biography Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People. Her 2021 National Book Award winner, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake, was a New York Times bestseller that won eleven historical and literary prizes, including the Cundill History Prize and the Frederick Douglass Prize. Her other nonfiction works include Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation, The Dawn of Detroit, Tales from the Haunted South, The House on Diamond Hill, and Ties That Bind. She has consulted with colleagues at historic sites and museums on representations of slavery, African American material culture, and the Black-Indigenous intertwined past, including, most recently, the Fabric of a Nation quilt exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Her work has been supported by a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Miles was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, and she is currently the Michael Garvey Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard University.

Rev. Dr. Heber Brown, III

Reverend Dr. Heber M. Brown, III has been a catalyst for personal transformation and social change for more than twenty years. For nearly fourteen years, he served as pastor of a baptist church in Baltimore where he saw and personally experienced the impacts of food apartheid. This helped to inspire him to launch the Black Church Food Security Network which advances food security and food sovereignty by co-creating Black food ecosystems anchored by nearly 250 Black congregations in partnership with Black farmers and other food justice stakeholders. He serves on the board of Bread For The World and Senior Church Advisor to Justis Connection; the premiere Black attorney referral network in the country and has garnered numerous awards including an Ashoka Fellowship. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Nothing More Sacred: Radical Stories Of Black Church Faith, Food and Freedom.