Campus & Community

Kathryn Tanner is appointed the Frederick Marquand Professor

Kathryn E. Tanner, the newly named Frederick Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology, is a proponent of “constructive theology,” focusing on how Christian thought might be brought to bear on contemporary issues of theological concern using social, cultural and feminist theory.
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Kathryn E. Tanner, the newly named Frederick Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology, is a proponent of “constructive theology,” focusing on how Christian thought might be brought to bear on contemporary issues of theological concern using social, cultural and feminist theory.

Her most recent books are “Christ the Key” (2010) and “Economy of Grace” (2005). Her other books include “God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment,” “Politics of God: Christian Theologies and Social Justice” and “Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity.” She is the author of many scholarly articles and chapters in books that include “The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology,” which she edited with John Webster and Iain Torrance.

Tanner graduated summa cum laude from Yale College in 1979 and earned her Ph.D. from the University in 1985. She served on the faculty of the University of Chicago Divinity School for 15 years, which followed more than a decade of teaching in Yale’s Department of Religious Studies and at Yale Divinity School. While she joined the Yale faculty in July 2010, she is on a leave of absence during the 2010-2011 academic year as a Luce Fellow, conducting research on financial capitalism and Christian belief and practices.

Tanner was recently chosen to deliver the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in 2015-2016.

She has served on the editorial boards of Modern Theology, the International Journal of Systematic Theology and the Scottish Journal of Theology, and is a former co-editor of the Journal of Religion. Active in many professional societies, she is a past president of the American Theological Society, the oldest theological society in the United States. An Episcopalian, she has been a member for eight years of the Episcopal Church’s Theology Committee, which advises the Episcopal House of Bishops.