We are pleased to announce that the Rev. Dr. Reed Carlson will join the School of Theology in July as assistant professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible.
A biblical scholar and Episcopal priest, Dr. Carlson comes to Sewanee from United Lutheran Seminary (ULS) in Philadelphia, where he was assistant professor of biblical studies and the director of Anglican studies. At ULS, he taught courses in Old Testament and Biblical Hebrew, as well as an elective called, “Spirit(s), Angels, and Demons in the Bible.” An overarching goal of Dr. Carlson’s scholarly work is engaging the fraught hermeneutical issues involved in critically examining ancient and modern religious experience.
His first book, Unfamiliar Selves in the Hebrew Bible (De Gruyter, 2022), was awarded the Manfred Lautenschläger Award for Theological Promise. In this monograph, he studies accounts of spirit possession as depicted in biblical and early Jewish literature in comparison with contemporary ethnographic reports of similar phenomena around the world. His current project is a collected volume he is co-editing entitled, Ominous Times: Anticipating Cataclysm in Early Judaism and Christianity (De Gruyter, 2025).
Dr. Carlson is a graduate of Harvard University, Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, and North Central University in Minneapolis.
"I am delighted that the Rev. Dr. Reed Carlson is joining the faculty of the School of Theology," said the Very Rev. Dr. James F. Turrell, dean of the School of Theology. "He is a first-rate teacher and scholar, with an ability to connect research on the Hebrew scriptures to present-day religious experience and to the pastoral issues our students will face in the parish.”
Please join the School of Theology in welcoming Dr. Carlson and his family to Sewanee.
