David P. Gushee

David P. Gushee (born June 17, 1962, Frankfurt, West Germany) is a Christian ethicist, Baptist pastor, author, professor, and public intellectual. Growing up, Gushee attended and completed his college years at College of William and Mary in 1984. After college, he received his Ph.D. in Christian ethics from Union Theological Seminary in 1993. He is also Chair of Christian Social Ethics at the Faculty of Religion and Theology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in cooperation with the International Baptist Theological Study Centre (IBTS Centre) in Amsterdam. He was formerly the Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy and the Senior Fellow of the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Christian Leadership at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee.

Gushee was elected in 2015 Vice President and 2018 Vice President of the American Academy of Religion. In January 2016 he was elected President-Elect of the Society of Christian Ethics.

Gushee served as president of Evangelicals for Human Rights, an organization advocating for an end to torture, especially that sponsored by the United States government; this organization has since become the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good . Gushee has also served on The Constitution Project's Detainee Treatment Task Force since December 2010. He helped draft the Evangelical Climate Initiative's Call to Action. He served on the Sojourners board of directors.

Gushee is a columnist for Baptist News Global, and has written for Religion News Service, Christianity Today, The Washington Post, and Sojourners.

Scholarship and recognition Gushee is an internationally recognized Holocaust scholar and ethicist, based on his 1994 book Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust. He was appointed in 2008 by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to serve as a member of the Church Relations and the Holocaust Committee. He taught a summer seminar for college faculty at the USHMM.

Gushee's most important books include Kingdom Ethics (with Glen Stassen, 2003), The Sacredness of Human Life (2013), and Changing Our Mind (2014). Kingdom Ethics was Christianity Today's Theology/Ethics Book of the Year for 2004, and has been translated into eight languages. A second edition was released in 2016.

Gushee is the author of well over one hundred scholarly articles, chapters and reviews and has written or edited twenty books.

Gushee was ordained to the Gospel Ministry at Walnut Hills Baptist Church in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1987.

He has received the Evangelical Press Association's Christian Journalism Award for 1991, 1992 and 1997, recognition of excellence in opinion writing.

Gushee was granted an honorary Doctor of Divinity (D.D.) degree in May 2009 by the John Leland Center for Theological Studies.

Education Gushee received his Ph.D. in Christian ethics from Union Theological Seminary in 1993, having earned his M.Phil. from Union Theological Seminary in 1990. Gushee earned his M.Div. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1987. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. from the College of William and Mary in 1984.

Notable works

Evangelical Ethics (2015) Gushee argues that Evangelicalism is a difficult concept to define due to the variety of associated meanings. Some academics have proposed that we abandon the term entirely due to its link with a restricted political goal. Some evangelicals have opted to dissociate themselves from evangelicalism, using names such as "Post-evangelicalism" to define themselves. He states that he is post-evangelical. Showing how to live a healthy Post-evangelicalism life by disconnecting from how evangelical Christianity used to be.

LGBTQ and activism In Gushee's book Changing Our Mind, he narrates his journey from a traditionalist to a passionate advocate for LGBTQ Christians in the church and society, using an evangelical ethical framework to redefine the issue from sexual ethics to human dignity. Until the late 20th century, Christians by and large held to traditionalist views on LGBTQ issues, rooted in a reading of six to seven biblical passages that speak negatively of homosexuality and affirm a heterosexual norm. Gushee is against this and stands in solidarity with the LGBTQ community. Gushee describes himself as "post evangelical” and attends both Catholic Mass and Baptist services.

Books