2012 Faculty

James Abbington is Associate Professor of Worship and Music at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. His research interests include music and worship in the Christian church, African American sacred folk music, organ, choral music, and ethnomusicology. Dr. Abbington serves as executive editor of the African American Church Music Series by GIA Publications (Chicago) and co-director of music for the Hampton University Ministers' and Musicians' Conference. He has served as the national director of music for both the Progressive National Baptist Convention and the NAACP.

Dorothy Bass is the director of the Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith (www.practicingourfaith.org), a Lilly Endowment project that explores the importance of practices in Christian life and considers how greater attention to practices might contribute to theology and theological education. In addition to publishing several scholarly volumes on practices, edited or coedited by Bass, the Valparaiso Project has created several books that are widely used in congregations and other ministry settings, and has worked directly with some of these to strengthen communities of practice.

Teresa Berger came to Yale in 2007, after having taught theology at Duke Divinity School for many years. Professor Berger holds doctorates both in liturgical studies and in constructive theology. Her scholarly interests lie at the intersections of both disciplines with gender theory, specifically gender history. Her most recent research project, titled Gender Differences and the Making of Liturgical History, is being published in the Ashgate series “Liturgy, Worship and Society” in 2011.

Ordained in the Church of England in 1999, Maggi Dawn began her career as a musician and singer-songwriter, releasing five albums and working as a freelance composer, arranger, and performer for various bands and recording studios, and for BBC radio and TV. In the 1990s she changed career, reading for a BA and PhD in theology at the University of Cambridge. Her research was on the relationship between literary form and theological meaning in the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

John Ferguson is the Elliot and Klara Stockdal Johnson Professor of Organ and Church Music and Cantor to the Student Congregation at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota. His responsibilities include directing the church music-organ program, teaching organ and conducting the St. Olaf Cantorei. A nationally known composer, clinician, recitalist and hymn festival leader, Dr. Ferguson has made enormous ecumenical contributions to the worship lives of a broad range of congregations.

Rita Ferrone is an independent writer and lecturer on issues of liturgy, catechesis and Christian initiation in the Roman Catholic Church. Her background in parish and diocesan ministry has given her work a practical slant, and made her a much sought-after workshop leader in dioceses throughout the United States.

Martin Jean is a professor in the practice of sacred music, and director of the Institute of Sacred Music. He has performed widely throughout the United States and Europe and is known for his broad repertorial interests. He was awarded first place at the international Grand Prix de Chartres in 1986, and in 1992 at the National Young Artists’ Competition in Organ Performance.

Fr. Anthony Ruff, OSB, is a monk of St. John’s Abbey and professor of liturgy and liturgical music at St. John’s University. He is author of Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform: Treasures and Transformations (LTP, 2007), a 720-page study of music in the Catholic reformed liturgy. He has masters’ degrees from St. John’s and Yale, and his doctorate is from the University of Graz, Austria. He was on the drafting committee for the U.S. Catholic bishops’ document Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship, and he chaired the international committee that wrote the chant for the new English missal. He is founder of the National Catholic Youth Choir and moderator of the blog Pray Tell. He directs Latin chant and plays organ at the abbey, and does priestly ministry at the local county jail and for the neighboring Benedictine sisters.

Don Saliers recently retired as William R. Cannon Distinguished Professor of Theology and Worship and director of the master of sacred music program at Emory University. Dr. Saliers is currently writing on liturgy and theological aesthetics and is a sought after lecturer and clinician in worship, music and congregational life.

Bryan Spinks is the Bishop F. Percy Goddard Professor of Liturgical Studies and Pastoral Theology, and chair of the program in liturgical studies, and Fellow of Morse College. Professor Spinks teaches courses on marriage liturgy; English Reformation worship traditions; the eucharistic prayer and theology, Christology, and liturgy of the Eastern churches; and contemporary worship. Research interests include East Syrian rites, Reformed rites, issues in theology and liturgy, and worship in a postmodern age.

Thomas Troeger, Lantz Professor of Christian Communication at Yale, has written twenty books in the fields of preaching, poetry, hymnody, worship, and the theology of music and is a frequent contributor to journals dedicated to these topics. His most recent books include Sermon Sparks: 156 Ideas to Ignite Your Preaching; Wonder Reborn: Creating Sermons on Hymns, Music and Poetry; and God, You Made All Things for Singing: Hymn Texts, Anthems, and Poems for a New Millennium. He is also a flutist and a poet whose work appears in the hymnals of most denominations and in SATB anthem settings by many contemporary composers. For three years Professor Troeger hosted the Season of Worship broadcast for Cokesbury, and he has led conferences and lectureships in worship and preaching throughout North America, as well as in Denmark, Holland, Australia, Japan, and Africa. Ordained in the Presbyterian Church in 1970 and in the Episcopal Church in 1999, he is dually aligned with both traditions. He is a former president of the Academy of Homiletics (the North American guild of scholars in homiletics) and of Societas Homiletica (the international guild of scholars in homiletics). He serves as the national chaplain to the American Guild of Organists. He was awarded an honorary D.D. degree from Virginia Theological Seminary.