Dr. Vergel Lattimore, president of Hood Theological Seminary, announced Dr. Michael K. Turner, associate professor of the history of Christianity at Hood, as the speaker for the Opening Convocation. “We are honored to have Dr. Turner, a highly regarded theologian and scholar, as the speaker for our opening convocation service” said Lattimore.
The convocation will be at 6 p.m. Friday in the Albert J.D. Aymer Center on the seminary campus. This service marks the official beginning of the academic year and is a time when the seminary community joins together asking God’s guidance throughout the coming year. It is also a time when new students sign their names in a document which is a part of the historical record of the seminary. The public is invited to attend the service.
Turner is a 1997 graduate of Emory & Henry College in Emory, Va., where he received a B.A. in religion and philosophy, magna cum laude, was a member of the Sigma Mu and Blue Keys honors fraternities and recipient of several scholarships and religion and philosophy awards.
He earned a master of divinity degree from Emory University in 2000 where he received the Dean’s Award (1997-2000). He also earned a master of arts in religious studies, and a Ph.D. in religious studies in 2009 from Vanderbilt University. He received a full tuition scholarship while at Vanderbilt. His doctoral dissertation was “Redeeming the Time: The Making of Early American Methodism.” In 1996 he was a visiting student at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Keble College, Oxford University.
Prior to coming to Hood, Turner was assistant professor of religious studies at Misericordia University in Dallas, Pa. Prior to that, he was a teaching fellow in the history of Christianity at Vanderbilt Divinity School and was visiting assistant professor in the department of history at Volunteer State Community College. He was also a teaching fellow in the department of American studies at Vanderbilt and served the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the UMC as instructor and grader in the United Methodist Course of Study. He has been pastor of The United Methodist Church in Pittston, Pa., and New Bethel and Centenary United Methodist churches.
Turner is published and has lectured and delivered many academic papers in the U.S. and abroad. This summer, he participated in the Duke Divinity School Wesley Studies Seminar. While there he completed work on a forthcoming book that explores the ways in which Abraham Lincoln used churches to promote Union nationalism during the Civil War era. Last year, Turner received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant and participated in the July 2013 NEH Seminar on “Interpreting Classic Buddhist Texts.”
He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Mid-Atlantic Region of the American Academy of Religion and is also a member of the American Society of Church History, the American Historical Association, and the Oxford Institute of Methodist Theological Studies.
Turner and his wife, Stephanie, an RN at Moses Cone Hospital in Greensboro, live in Salisbury’s West Square Historic District.
Hood Theological Seminary, 1810 Lutheran Synod Drive, is a graduate and professional school where intellectual discourse and ministerial preparation occur in tandem within the framework of a community of faith. Its student body comprises persons from many different denominations. Accredited by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada, the seminary is sponsored by the AME Zion Church and approved by the University Senate of the United Methodist Church. As a theological seminary, it provides for the church an educational community in which Christian maturity and ministerial preparation take place together.