Kenneth Parker

Since 2020, it has been my privilege to lead a Catholic Studies Initiative at the request of President Gormley and Provost Dausey, who approved the creation of the Catholic Studies Department (CSD) in September 2020. Establishing and teaching in this department has been a great joy, and the greatest joy has been the students who have chosen to enter our classes, join in our events, and who exude a deep love of the Catholic tradition and desire to deepen in understanding of their Christian faith. What more could a professor wish to experience in his professional life!

I have been grateful for the leadership of Dean Kristen Blair of the McAnulty College of Liberal Arts and Graduate School, who has overseen the department's development of a curriculum for a major and minor, and has provided wise guidance as the CSD has advanced its goals on campus, in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, and expanded its engagement nationally (facilitating a network of Catholic Studies programs) and internationally through various forms of collaboration. Colleagues who form the CSD faculty have created an atmosphere of good will and enthusiasm that makes our work a pleasure.

I was invited in 2017 to take up the Ryan Endowed Chair for Newman Studies at Duquesne University. During my first three years I was pleased to engage the priorities of the Department of Theology, where I continue a joint appointment, to advance the mission of Duquesne University, and to promote the National Institute for Newman Studies and Duquesne University's Joint Initiative for Newman Studies.

Background

I bring to the study of historical theology an unusual personal background. Born into the home of a Pilgrim Holiness pastor in the mountains of North Carolina, my interests in theology began in childhood as I tried to understand the doctrine of entire sanctification my father preached. As an undergraduate at Houghton College, my theological questions sent me on a quest to understand Christian history; and experiences in a rural Episcopal parish profoundly affected my understanding of sacraments. During studies at Fuller Theological Seminary I came to know a monastery in the Mojave Desert, where I learned to cherish the ancient spiritual traditions of Christianity. While doing research on the English Reformation at the University of Cambridge, I became a Roman Catholic (October 1982). Three years later, after finishing my Ph.D. and teaching at the University of Alabama, I returned to Saint Andrew's Abbey in California to become a monk. Five years of monastic life deeply affected my development as a theologian. When I decided to return to academic life in 1990, Westmont College invited me to teach in their History Department.

I arrived at Saint Louis University (SLU) in 1992 and enjoyed 25 years pursuing scholarship, teaching, and service in the undergraduate and Ph.D. programs of the Department of Theological Studies. As Director of Undergraduate Studies (1994-1997), I participated in the growth of that program from a dozen students to over 130 majors and minors. Outcomes assessment based education became a keen interest and an integral part of the curriculum reform process that I led from 1993-1997. My work in the Ph.D. in Historical Theology program included directing 17 dissertations, five focused on John Henry Newman.

My original area of scholarship focused on early modern English theology, and I have published on English sabbatarianism, Richard Greenham, and Elizabethan pastoral care. In the late 1980s my research interests expanded to include John Henry Newman and Christian historiographical traditions. In the early 2000s, I began exploring the papal infallibility debates of the 1860s and how history was employed by key theologians. This research has drawn me into studies of two Irish American archepiscopal brothers, Francis and Peter Kenrick, who profoundly influenced the discourse on papal authority in the 19th-century North Atlantic Catholic world. Their Irish background has led to research on the Irish gallican tradition and its impact on Catholicism in the United States.

I am passionate about learning and find no greater pleasure than observing that experience unfold in the lives of my students. Whether engaging freshmen or mentoring dissertation students, each encounter offers an opportunity to observe the realization of their unique potential. From 2007 to 2014, it was a personal blessing to be the founding director of the college-in-prison program at Saint Louis University, which now offers an associate of arts degree to incarcerated men and staff at a maximum-security state prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri. Working with this population of students has heightened my appreciation for the privilege of learning, and the damage done when that opportunity is withheld. In 2014, the College of Arts and Sciences named me to the Steber Professorship in Theological Studies, which required relinquishment of my administrative responsibilities for the SLU Prison Program.

In the spring of 2016 the Board of the National Institute for Newman Studies (NINS) asked me to serve as Interim Executive Director of the National Institute for Newman Studies, located in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The year afforded opportunities to advance NINS's work on the digitization, organization, and cataloguing of Newman's Birmingham Oratory Archive, enhance NINS's physical and digital library, reorient the Institute's Scholars Program, and affiliate the Newman Studies Journal with the Catholic University of America Press.

In the spring of 2016 the Board of the National Institute for Newman Studies (NINS) asked me to serve as Interim Executive Director of the National Institute for Newman Studies, located in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The year afforded opportunities to advance NINS's work on the digitization, organization, and cataloguing of Newman's Birmingham Oratory Archive, enhance NINS's physical and digital library, reorient the Institute's Scholars Program, and affiliate the Newman Studies Journal with the Catholic University of America Press.

Education