The Preaching Peace team

Michael Hardin

Michael is a grateful graduate (1988) of North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago where he studied Dietrich Bonhoeffer with F. Burton Nelson and Rene Girard with Edwin A. Hallsten. He lives in Lancaster, PA (in the heart of Amish country). Michael and his beloved Lorri have three daughters and two granddaughters, all named from characters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Simarillion.

Michael and Lorri are members of Akron Mennonite Church. Since 2002 they have taken classes at Tom Brown Jr’s School of Nature Awareness, Tracking and Wilderness survival (uummm, dandelions for lunch again). Michael loves the group Yes (when Jon Anderson is singing), the New York Giants (go Big Blue!), wandering the creation, really good Italian and Mexican cuisine, and of course good books. He is also a singer and songwriter.

Michael is the author of The Jesus Driven Life (JDL Press, 2009) and the co-editor of Stricken by God? Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ (Eerdmans, 2007), Peace Be With You (Cascadia, 2010), and Compassionate Eschatology (Wipf & Stock 2011).  He has published over a dozen articles utilizing Rene Girard’s mimetic theory and is pleased to be affiliated with the marvelous group of people who make up the Colloquium on Violence and Religion.

With Lorri, Michael co-founded Preaching Peace. Together with Tom Nicol and Tony Bartlett, Michael co-founded Theology and Peace.

Some of Michael’s Essays

  • “The Biblical Testaments As A Marriage of Convenience: Rene Girard and Early Christian Hermeneutics” presented to the Colloquium on Violence and Religion at Stanford, AAR/SBL Annual Meeting, 1990
  • “The Scapegoat: Crisis in Christology” presented to the Colloquium on Violence and Religion, Wiesbaden, Germany, 1994
  • “Mimesis and Dominion: The Dynamics of Violence and the Imitation of Christ in Maximus Confessor” presented to the Colloquium on Violence and Religion at Stanford, 1992 published in St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol 36. No. 4
  • “Violence: Rene Girard and the Recovery of Early Christian Perspectives” presented to the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, 1988 and published in Brethren Life and Thought, Vol 37, No2
  • “Sacrificial Language in the ‘Letter to the Hebrews’” presented to the General Epistles section of the AAR/SBL Annual Meeting 1993, and represented upon request to a symposium held at the Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, IN 1994. Published in Violence Renounced, edited by Willard Swartley (Pandora Press: 2000)
  • “Reflections on the Spirituality of Soren Kierkegaard” Scottish Journal of Theology, Vol 45, 325-340.
  • “The Trinity as Hermeneutic: A Pietist Perspective” The Covenant Quarterly, Vol 45, No. 1
  • “The Authority of Scripture: A Pietist Perspective” The Covenant Quarterly, Vol 49, No. 1
  • “The Twelve Steps and Christian Spirituality” presented to the Christian Association of Psychological Studies, Detroit, 1992. Published in The Journal of Ministry in Addiction and Recovery, Vol 1, No 1
  • “A Theological Justification for the Anonymity of God” The Journal of Ministry in Addiction and Recovery, Vol 1, No 2
  • “Do Clergy Foster Co-Dependence?” The Journal of Ministry in Addiction and Recovery, Vol 2, No. 1

Tony Bartlett

Tony Bartlett: I was born in 1946 in the shadow of World War II. My father had served in the British army in India and took ship back to England directly they dropped the bomb on Japan. My mother gave birth a year later. She was from Ireland, one of eleven sisters and brothers. Her parents had brought them up busting a living from rock and peat moors wedged in a vast horizon of water, Galway Bay in the west, Loch Corrib in the east, streams underfoot and rain in the air. Three older siblings emigrated to the U.S., but by the time my mother was eighteen the Depression curtailed U.S. immigration and she moved to England. She brought to the land of the enemy fervent national Catholicism and a passion for literature.
As a little boy and teenager the Roman Catholic priesthood was destiny. It seemed to be the only thing that made sense. I was ordained in 1973 within a religious congregation, the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, bound by vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. I studied with the Jesuits, first in the Pontifical Athanaem in Oxfordshire and then Heythrop College at London University. I also spent a year at the Lateran University in Rome. I left the congregation and the priesthood in 1984, finally conscious that it was either life or the institutional priesthood; there could be no middle way.
I ran a mission for homeless people in London’s East End and got married to Linda. We had children, moved to Norfolk, England, and then to Syracuse, U.S.A., where I gained my Ph.D. I am the author of Cross Purposes, The Violent Grammar of Christian Atonement, various papers and articles, and The Jonah Zone, Notes for a Theology of Jesus in the World which is appearing serially as an ebook. I teach as Assistant Professor in Theology at the Episcopal Seminary, Bexley Hall, in Rochester N.Y. Riding from Syracuse by car every week I cross a wetland on highway 90 called the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge, known pejoratively to locals as “the swamp.” For me it feels immensely prayerful every time I cross that place. It is all the waters on earth that the Wisdom of God hovers over, looking for her home.
For More on Tony and his book Cross Purposes (click here)
Bible Studies on 2nd Isaiah by Tony Barlett (click here)

John Mann

John Mann is a pilgrim on a journey that began in Portland, Oregon when at the age of nine he wandered into a boy’s club at the local Baptist church. He followed a path that led to pastoral ministry and along the way picked up some hands-on skills by way of putting bread on the table: shoe-shine boy, mechanic, lumberjack, bus driver and fire fighter. In addition he managed to obtain a variety of degrees from institutions of higher learning such as Portland State University, Bethel Theological Seminary and McCormick Theological Seminary.

John is essentially a Presbyterian who is continually being re-formed by the foolishness of the gospel. In 2003 he moved from a pastorate in suburban Minneapolis to Glasgow, Scotland where he works as a Church of Scotland minister in a post-war housing estate, also known as an “urban priority” parish.

He has three grown children and since the year 2000 has been happily married to Lindsay Louise Biddle. John is an avid storyteller and is on the board of The Village, a Scottish storytelling center that happens to be located in his church, St. James, Glasgow. He is actively involved in the British Stop the War Coalition, has provided material for the short film, “Dear Mrs. Blair” and appeared in the BBC documentary “One Mother’s Son.” He appreciates jazz, fish and chips and is currently forming and reforming a collection of single malt whisky.

Mary McKinney

Mary McKinney is a 1959 graduate of the First United Methodist Kindergarten  in Winder, Georgia, and credits wonderful parents, kindergarten and  congregation with her relationship with Jesus Christ and her solid foundation for life and ministry.  A graduate of Agnes Scott College and Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, she feels  honored to be pastor at Mayfield Congregational Church.  She has three wonderful children and lives with her partner, Goldy.  Through an internet connection four years ago she stumbled onto preachingpeace.org.  Life hasn’t been the same since.  She enjoyed participating in MP1 and MP2, and encourages you to sign up for MP3!  She loves camping, learning more about Grandfather, and has recently completed the Standard Course @ Tom Brown’s  Tracker School.  She is still trying to bust out fire with a bow drill.

Daniel Miller

Daniel is the web administrator for PreachingPeace.org. He graduated from LeTourneau University with a B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering, and he works as a web developer and computer programmer by day. Daniel and his wife Natalie attend Landisville Mennonite Church. Daniel is also very interested in the work of Preaching Peace, and has attended many of the Monday evening classes offered by Preaching Peace at Landisville Mennonite Church.

 

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