New faculty at PLU, Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2018. (Photo/John Froschauer)

Jon R. Kershner

I live near Seattle in the United States with my two young daughters and wife, who works as a High School math teacher. I am Faculty Fellow at Pacific Lutheran University, Honorary Researcher in Theology at Lancaster University, and Recognized Supervisor at the University of Birmingham. I edit the journal, Quaker Religious Thought and I helped establish a Quaker Studies Program Unit at the American Academy of Religion. I enjoy hiking, gardening, snowshoeing, and climbing trees. I have recently taken up skateboarding.

Qualifications

M.Div., Ph.D., Editor of Quaker Religious Thought

Teaching and supervision topics

My specialty is the theology of John Woolman and I have written and taught courses on topics related to Quaker history and theology, abolitionism, and apocalypticism.

Current Research

I am currently researching John Dickinson and colonial interactions with American Indians. I am also researching religious extremism, apocalyptic movements, and Quaker political theology.

Publications

  • Editor, Quakers and Mysticism: Comparative and Syncretic Approaches to Spirituality, Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2019.
  • John Woolman and the Government of Christ: A Colonial Quaker’s Vision for the British Atlantic World, Oxford University Press, 2018.
  • “To Renew the Covenant”: Religious Themes in Eighteenth Century Quaker Abolitionism, Brill Publishers, 2018.
  • with C. Wess Daniels, and Robynne Rogers Healey, Quaker Studies: An Overview, the Current State of the Field. Brill Publishers, 2018.
  • “Woolman and Wilderness: A Quaker Sacramental Ecology” in Quakers, Creation Care and Sustainability, eds. Cherice Bock and Stephen Potthoff, Friends Association for Higher Education, 2019.
  • “Quaker Studies in Critical Perspective,” Bulletin for the Study of Religion, 48:1-2, November 2019, 26-35.
  • “Anthony Benezet’s (1713-1784) Revolutionary Rhetoric: Slavery and Sentimentalism in Quaker Political Remonstrance,” Quaker Religious Thought, 130, March 2018, 5-15.
  • “Evangelical Quakerism and Global Christianity,” The Cambridge Companion to Quakerism eds. Pink Dandelion, Stephen Angell, Cambridge University Press, 2018.
  • “‘Diminish not a Word:’ The Prophetic Voice of John Woolman,” Quakers and Literature, Friends Association for Higher Education, 2016, pp. 11-26.
  • “‘Come out of Babylon, my People’: John Woolman’s (1720-1772) Antislavery Theology and the trans-Atlantic Economy,” in Quakers and their Allies in the Abolitionist Cause, 1754–1808, eds. Susan Kozel and Maurice Jackson, Routledge Press, 2015, pp. 85-97.

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