Iliff Faculty

Members of our Iliff faculty, one–half of whom are global majority, and have connections to a wide variety of denominations and faiths, including American Baptist, Buddhist, Catholic, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Episcopal, Jewish, Lutheran (ELCA), Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of Christ and United Methodist.

Each of our Iliff faculty members has an extraordinary commitment to teaching and scholarship that ensures an enriching and rewarding learning environment, while their dedication to developing caring, collegial relationships nurtures and challenges each student in ways textbooks and lectures cannot.

Core Faculty by Teaching Areas

Theology and Religious Practices 

Boyung Lee

Professor of Practical Theology

Rev. Dr. Lee is a feminist communitarian practical theologian, her theological and scholarly pursuit is fueled by her commitment to social justice. She works hard to embody her commitment in her leadership and pedagogical practices. Before Iliff, Rev. Dr. Lee taught for 15 years at the Pacific School of Religion (PSR) and the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley, CA, where she became the first woman of color tenured faculty in 2007. Dr. Lee is also an ordained United Methodist elder who served churches in Korea and the United States.

Katherine Turpin

Professor of Practical Theology and Religious Education

Katherine Turpin joined Iliff’s faculty in June 2002. Her current research interests include how histories of oppression and structural inequality inform the identity of white women and unlearning and disrupting white supremacy in the practices of education and theological reflection.

Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi

Associate Professor of Leadership and Formation

Director of the Vocational Formation Office 

Joining the faculty in 2018, Dr. Lizardy-Hajbi oversees contextual education, co-directs the Doctor of Ministry in Prophetic Leadership, and teaches in the fields of leadership theory and praxis, congregational and community formation/change, practical theology, and applied research methods. In particular, her interests include organizational leadership, liberative theological and postcolonial approaches to ministry, church vitality and growth, young adult spirituality, and intersectional pedagogical practices.

Catherine Kelsey

Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
and Dean of the Faculty

Rev. Cathie Kelsey, MDiv,ThD (Vanderbilt, Harvard) innovates regularly in her role as Dean of the Faculty. “The contexts we live in are changing rapidly. That means the ways we become community require experimentation. In my leadership of experiments, I root us in our purpose: ‘nurture passion, cultivate compassion and encourage works of justice throughout creation.’ These are values I know we share, values with which we build together across our many differences.”

Tom Barlow

Term Assistant Professor in Methodist Studies

Director of Non-Degree Programs

Rev. Barlow has taught as Adjunct Faculty at Iliff since 2011, joining the faculty as Term Assistant Professor in Methodist Studies beginning in the 2023 academic year. As a theologian, Barlow’s scholarship focuses on the on the operative and co-operative natures of divine grace that are visible in the theologies of John Wesley and Paul Tillich, with a particular emphasis on the ways in which communities might intentionally create space for transformational relationships to occur across differences and human-constructed boundary lines. 

Comparative Religious Traditions

Jacob N. Kinnard

Professor of Comparative Religions

Jacob N. Kinnard is Professor of Comparative Religions. He teaches a range of courses on the religions of India and methodological and theoretical issues, including courses on pilgrimage, religion and violence, and religion and the environment. Kinnard earned his BA from Bowdoin College, and an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago.

Albert Hernández

Associate Professor of the History of Christianity

Hernández joined the Iliff faculty in 2001. He teaches courses in the history of Christianity from Medieval to Early Modern times with additional expertise in the history of the ancient Hellenistic-Roman period. His research and teaching areas include the history of mysticism and pneumatology; Muslim and Christian relations beginning with the Crusades; religious diversity in medieval Iberia and the Spanish Empire; and the history of medicine and pandemics. 

Lee Butler

Bishop Henry White Warren and Elizabeth Iliff Warren Professor of Africana Pastoral Theology

President and Chief Executive Officer of Iliff School of Theology

The Rev. Dr. Lee H. Butler, Jr. serves as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Iliff School of Theology, an appointment that he began on July 1, 2023. Dr. Butler is a past president of the Society for the Study of Black Religion, a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Society for Pastoral Theology, the Institute for Signifying Scriptures, Society for Process Consulting, the Association of Black Psychologists, and a Board Member of the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation. He is an active publishing scholar.

Constructive Theology, Analysis, and Ethics

Miguel A. De La Torre

Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies

Dr. Miguel A. De La Torre – international scholar, documentarian, novelist, academic author, and scholar activist. The focus of Dr. De La Torre’s academic pursuit is social ethics within contemporary U.S. thought, specifically how religion affects race, class, and gender oppression. Since obtaining his doctoral in 1999, he has authored over a hundred articles and published forty-one books. He presently serves as Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies

Theodore M. Vial, Jr.

Harvey Potthoff Professor of Theology and Modern Western Religious Thought

Senior Researcher for the AI Institute 

Ted Vial is the Potthoff Professor of Theology and Modern Western Religious Thought. He has published on the intersection of religion and nationalism, and religion and race. His current research is in two areas: The interaction of Artificial Intelligence and humans, and the construction of Judaism and gender in the modern world. His B.A. is from Brown University and both M.A. and Ph. D. from The University of Chicago. 

Philip Reed-Butler

Associate Professor of Theology and Black Posthuman Artificial Intelligence Systems

Director of the AI Institute

Philip Butler is an international scholar whose work primarily focuses on the intersections of neuroscience, technology, spirituality, and Blackness. He uses the wisdom of these spaces to engage in critical and constructive analysis on Black posthumanism, artificial intelligence and pluriversal future realities. He is also the founder of the Seekr Project, a distinctly Black conversational artificial intelligence with mental health capacities. 

Antony Alumkal

Associate Professor of Sociology of Religion

Antony Alumkal’s research interests include the influence of race on religion in the United States, the pseudoscientific and conspiratorial thinking of the American Christian Right, and how the “Progressive Christianity” movement mirrors the fundamentalism that it criticizes. “Following Iliff’s Purpose and Vision Statement for me means insisting on the truth in an increasingly post-truth world.”

April M. Mack

Assistant Professor of Religion and Social Justice

Dr. April Mack describes herself as a Black feminist decolonial scholar and theo-ethicist concerned with ethics related to complex social issues, structural inequality, and wholistic justice and flourishing for Black Americans. Her research focuses on the development of postcolonial womanist theo-ethical discourse within Womanist Ethics. Dr. Mack’s other research interests include African Americans and Public Policy, Christian Social Ethics, and religious violence.Her signature course on religious violence is called God, Religion, and Violence.

Sacred Texts

Pam Eisenbaum

Professor of Biblical Studies and Christian Origins

Pamela Eisenbaum is Professor of Biblical Studies and Christian Origins and affiliate faculty of the Center of Judaic Studies at the University of Denver. She holds an MTS from Harvard Divinity School and a PhD from Columbia University. She is a contributor to the highly touted Jewish Annotated New Testament and many essays on the Bible, ancient Judaism and the origins of Christianity.

Amy Erickson

Professor of Hebrew Bible

Amy Erickson is Professor of Hebrew Bible at the Iliff School of Theology. She has a BA from Bates College, an MDiv from Columbia Theological Seminary, and a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. Her research interests include Hebrew poetry, poetic and mythological texts in ancient West Asian literature, and the Hebrew Bible’s history of interpretation.

Eric C. Smith

Associate Professor of Early Christian Texts and Traditions

Eric C. Smith teaches in the fields of biblical studies and early Christianity and serves as liaison to the Disciples Seminary Foundation. His research and teaching center on a constellation of interests in the world of late antiquity, including identity formation, material culture and materialist approaches to religion, and both ancient and modern interpretations of biblical texts.