Dr. Angela Carpenter of the Hope College religion faculty has been appointed to the college’s Leonard and Marjorie Maas Endowed Professorship in Reformed Theology.
The professorship is for a faculty member whose scholarly emphasis is on the historical and philosophical development of Reformed theology through the present day. First awarded in 2007, it was donated by the late Leonard and Marjorie Maas, who were longtime supporters of Hope as well as lifelong members of the Reformed Church in America, the denomination with which the college is affiliated.
Carpenter has been a member of the Hope faculty since 2017, and is an assistant professor of religion. She focuses on Christian theology and ethics, with an emphasis on Reformed theology. Especially, her work considers how Christian theological claims, particularly regarding grace and human action, might be informed by the human sciences.
Her publications include the book “Responsive Becoming: Moral Formation in Theological, Evolutionary, and Developmental Perspective” (T&T Clark, 2019), which received the Dallas Willard Book Award from The Martin Institute and Dallas Willard Research Center of Westmont College in 2020. Her next book project is on grace and social ethics, to be published by Baker Academic.
Among other honors, she was one of only 15 scholars from colleges and universities across the United States as well as Scotland selected as fellows to participate in “Collaborative Inquiries in Christian Theological Anthropology,” which is funded through a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. Running through June 30 of this year, the project is exploring how the theology of human nature engages with biology and the social sciences.
Carpenter graduated from Western Kentucky University in 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in religious studies. She completed a Master of Theological Studies and a doctorate, both in theology and Christian ethics, at the University of Notre Dame in 2001 and 2015, respectively.