OMSC Senior Mission Scholars in Residence

Each semester the Overseas Ministries Study Center welcomes Senior Mission Scholars who provide leadership in OMSC’s Study Program and are available to residents for counsel regarding their own mission research interests. Seasoned scholarship, internationally renowned instructors, cutting edge seminars, and an ecclesiastically diverse resident community make OMSC the place to be for renewal of mission skills and vision.

Dr. Edith L. Blumhofer
Spring 2009

Dr. Edith L. Blumhofer is professor of history at Wheaton College and director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, Wheaton, Illinois. Her research interests focus on the history of Christianity in post–Civil War America. She is also interested in the religion of ordinary people and has recently been exploring the history of Protestant hymnody. She is preparing a set of Web-based resources to facilitate the teaching of Pentecostal studies. Dr. Blumhofer, author of People of Faith: A History of Western Christianity (2007), is writing Evangelicalism: A Very Short Introduction (forthcoming from Oxford University Press).

Dr. Kevin Ward
Spring 2009

Dr. Kevin Ward, senior lecturer in African religious studies at the University of Leeds (U.K.), spent twenty years working in East Africa as a teacher and theological educator. He did his original research in Kenya, examining the problems of Protestant Christian ecumenical cooperation in colonial Kenya. He has continued to have a strong interest in East Africa, focusing on the history and spirituality of the East African Revival, church-state relations in Uganda, and the religious basis of conflict in Uganda. He is author of A History of Global Anglicanism (2006) and coeditor with Brian Stanley of The Church Mission Society and World Christianity, 1799–1999 (1999).

Dr. Allison Howell
Fall 2009

Dr. Allison Howell, an Australian, was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly the Belgian Congo), where her parents were missionaries with the Brethren Assemblies. Since 1981 she has served mostly in Ghana as a missionary researcher and teacher, first with SIM Ghana in the Upper East Region among the Kasena, and for the past ten years on the staff of the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission, and Culture. A senior research fellow and the dean of accredited studies at the institute, Howell also coordinates a group of Kasena pastors who are writing a Bible commentary on the Gospel of John in Kasem.

Dr. Randall Prior
Fall 2009

Dr. Randall Prior is professor of ministry studies and missiology at the United Faculty of Theology, Melbourne, Australia. He teaches in the areas of theological reflection for ministry practice and pastoral theology, as well as about the intersection of Gospel and culture, mission, and evangelism. Prior’s research interests include exploring these topics in the context of Vanuatu as an experiment in grounding theology in a post-independence South Pacific. He is editor of The Gospel and Cultures: Initial Explorations in the Australian Context (1997) and a series called The Gospel and Culture in Vanuatu. A former pastor, Prior is part of the Uniting Church in Australia.

Dr. Charles Amjad-Ali
Spring 2010

Dr. Charles Amjad-Ali, who was ordained as a presbyter of the Church of Pakistan in 1987, is professor for justice and Christian community at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota. Previously he was director of the Christian Study Center, Rawalpindi, Pakistan (1985–95), and chair of the Asian Partnership for Community Organization, part of the Christian Conference of Asia. Since 1991 he has been a member of the Christian-Muslim task force of the Lutheran World Federation. He was a founder of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Dr. Amjad-Ali’s most recent book is Islamophobia or Restorative Justice: Tearing the Veils of Ignorance (2006). He is coauthor of Leaving the Shadows? Pakistan’s Christians and the Search for Orientation in an Overwhelmingly Muslim Society (forthcoming).

Dr. Philomena Njeri Mwaura
Spring 2010

Dr. Philomena Njeri Mwaura, senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya, teaches courses in the areas of African Christian history, new religious movements, African-instituted churches, world Christianity, and gender. A former curriculum developer at the Kenya Institute of Education, Dr. Mwaura has also been a consultant on gender mainstreaming in education, theology, and HIV/AIDS vaccine clinical trials with clients that include the Kenya Episcopal (Roman Catholic) Conference and International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of World Christianity and is a contributing editor to Mission Studies. She was the Africa region coordinator of the Theology Commission of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians.

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