Ordinarily this time of year we are able to devote all of our resources to processing the proposal ratings, decisions, and notifications. However, with the unusual circumstances of this year much of our time has been devoted to developing contingency plans for the fall. As a result we are pushing out the notification timeline. Notifications for proposals made to theme or discipline specific sessions, and proposals moved from the program unit queue will be made by June 15.

On May 4, 2020, the Executive Committee of the Evangelical Theological Society accepted the recommendation of the Executive Director Search Committee and unanimously selected Ken Magnuson as the Society’s second Executive Director.  David S. Dockery, chair of the search committee remarked that the committee reviewed applications and nominations from a large group of qualified individuals. "It soon became clear," he noted, "to every member of the committee that Ken Magnuson, based on his outstanding education, years and breadth of experience, scholarship, administrative gifts, relational abilities and people skills, as well as his Christian character and commitment, was extremely well suited for this key role in the life of ETS. We are thankful for the fine leadership that Mike Thigpen has provided and are extremely hopeful about Ken Magnuson's guidance for the Society for the years ahead."  ETS President, Craig S. Keener, commented, “All of us on the Executive Committee affirm Ken Magnuson and are grateful to the Lord for the prospect of leadership that will continue the wonderful legacy we have already experienced with Mike Thigpen.”
 
Ken Magnuson has been on the faculty of Southern Seminary since 1999. He has served as Professor of Christian Ethics, Chair of the Department of Worldview and Culture, and as Director of The Commonweal Project on Faith, Work, and Human Flourishing. He serves as a deacon in his church, on the editorial board for Themelios, and as a board member for the American Friends of Tyndale House (Cambridge, UK). Magnuson holds a PhD in Theological Ethics from Cambridge University, and MDiv and BA degrees from Bethel Seminary and Bethel University (MN). He teaches and writes on discipleship and moral issues, including marriage and sexuality, singleness, and infertility and reproductive technology. He has published journal articles and contributed chapters to several books, and has recently completed Invitation to Christian Ethics, published by Kregel (forthcoming in 2020). He serves on the steering committee of the ETS Christian Ethics program unit. Ken and his wife Katherine have four children.



Magnuson will begin this new post June 15, 2020.  He succeeds J. Michael Thigpen who has served the Society as Executive Director since 2009.  Thigpen is leaving the position to serve as Executive Vice-President and Provost of Phoenix Seminary.  On hearing the selection, Thigpen noted, “I believe Ken Magnuson is the right person to lead ETS in this next season.  Ken's temperament, experience, godly character, and outlook on the role of the Society in the church and the academy are a wonderful fit to move us forward.”

The Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies XXXI 2019 on: “The Future of Education: Rediscovering Free Inquiry,” featured on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Selected New Books on Higher Education list (Dec. 2019).

Two Related Calls for Papers:

(1) JIS XXXII 2020 on the overall theme: “The Digital Challenge: How to Humanize Technology.” Call for Papers on JIS web: https://www.jis3.org/callforpapers .

(2) ICSA IX. World Congress on: “Social Media & Intimacy: An Alternative Reality?,” Hilton Pasadena, California, USA, 30 July-1 August 2020. Call for Papers/Registration on JIS web: https://www.jis3.org/icsaix2020 .

We plan as well a JIS 2020 Special Section on: “The Future of Education Revisited.”

72nd Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society

Nov 17 - 19, 2020, Providence, RI

Theme: “Christianity and Islam”

The proposal period will open on Monday, March 2, 2020. The submission deadline for proposals will be Tuesday, March 31, 2020, at 5:00pm (Pacific).

To view the Call for Proposals please click here
To view the Section call for proposals please click here

At its meeting last month, the Executive Committee approved a change in JETS subscription rates. Beginning Dec 1, 2019 the new rates for JETS are:

• $45 1 year
• $90 2 years
• $135 3 years

It had been 20 years since the last increase to the subscription prices. The increase in production prices over the last two decades made the move fiscally necessary. Even with the increase, JETS continues to be competitively priced in the academic journal market.

Download the ETS Annual Meeting Program app onto your iPhone or Smartphone for access to the program, maps, list of exhibitors, advertisements, special events, and more. The program app is updated immediately with each change in the program so you will never get caught at a cancelled session when using the app.

Download the app at the App Store^TM

Download the app at Google Play^TM.

If you want to check out Theologians Without Borders, look for Dr Ian Payne and Dr Stephanie Black at our display stand (#321) at the Annual Meeting, November 2019 in San Diego.

A Facebook group has been started for women who are ETS members or who are considering membership as well as women who work for evangelical publishers exhibiting at ETS. It's meant to be a setting where collaboration, encouragement, and networking can take place. If you are a woman and a Facebook user, please find us and request to join! If you know of women you'd like to encourage to join and participate, please pass the word along and they can request to join.

Proposals submitted to Section open sessions have been notified whether the proposal was accepted, declined, or moved for consideration in a discipline specific session.

Proposals submitted to discipline specific and theme sessions will be notified by June 1 if the proposal has been accepted, declined, or held for potential inclusion if cancellations occur.

The status of proposals are updated when decisions are made. To view the status of your proposal, click the View My Proposal(s) link in the Annual Meeting Proposal System menu.

Center of Theological Inquiry is accepting applications for the Theology as Interdisciplinary Inquiry Writing Workshop for Early Career Scholars.

The worship is a 6-week intensive at CTI in Princeton, NJ, May 2 - April 8, 2020.

The center welcomes applications from early career scholars-doctoral, post-doctoral, and pre-tenure-who address the methodological question of theology as interdisciplinary inquiry in their own current research.

Scholarship Program Accepting Nominations

We are now accepting nominations for the 2019 Annual Meeting Student Scholarship program. After a thorough review of the program's effectiveness over the last 6 years, two key changes have been made. The first is that the scholarship is no longer regional. Nominees may reside anywhere in the US or Canada. (We hope to be able to expand the program to additional international regions in the future.) The second change is that the program now exclusively targets doctoral students.

The Program's Purpose

This program is designed to help academically promising doctoral students who find participation in the Society economically prohibitive, or who come from a traditionally underrepresented group to get to know the Society, its functions, its leaders, and the role it plays in supporting conservative evangelical scholarship. The goal of the program is to encourage and support students, who might otherwise not participate in the Society, to appreciate the value of membership and the profitable part that it might play in their academic and ministry futures.

Nominating a Student

Full or associate members who want to nominate a student should send an email to rallinson@etsjets.org that includes the following:

• Nominee's name and email address
• Description of the member's relationship with the nominee
• Description of how the nominee fits the scholarship criteria

Nominations must be received by May 31st. Nominees will receive an email from the ETS office with application instructions.

For complete information on the scholarship program, please see: ETS Annual Meeting Student Scholarship Program

Introducing Theologians Without Borders

As we all know, there is a resource imbalance in global theological education. The West has material resources and many more PhDs. But it is the Majority World (MW) church that is growing in leaps and bounds. Many Western (W) scholar-teachers want to help and are willing to visit to teach in the MW.

Download the ETS Annual Meeting Program app onto your iPhone or Smartphone for access to the program, maps, list of exhibitors, advertisements, special events, and more. The program app is updated immediately with each change in the program so you will never get caught at a cancelled session when using the app.

Download the app at the App Store^TM

Download the app at Google Play^TM.

All paper proposal notifications have been sent. If you did not receive an email notification regarding the status of your paper proposal please log in to your member account. Then click on the "View My Paper Proposal(s)” link in the "Annual Meeting Proposal System” menu on the left side of the homepage. The status column will show one of the following:

• Approved - means that the proposal was accepted and that you will be receiving session details by June 15th.

Verifying That Your Submission Was Received

To view your proposal(s), please use the View My Paper Proposal(s) link the Annual Meeting Proposal System box on the left side of the homepage. (You must be logged in to view your proposals.)

If you see:

• Submitted, your proposal was received and is awaiting adjudication.
• Moved, your proposal was not accepted in the program unit session where it was submitted, but was rated highly enough to be considered for use in the discipline specific sessions.
• Approved, your proposal was accepted. You will be contacted by email with session details. (See below for notificaiton timing.)
• Declined, your proposal was not accepted. Unfortunately, due to the high volume, we are not able to provide individual feedback on declined proposals.
• Held, your proposal was rated highly, but there was not room for it in the program. In the event of a cancelation in an appropriate session, we may contact you regarding the potentail of adding your paper to the program.

Notification Timeline

There is an opportunity to teach at the Zaporozhye Bible College and Seminary in Ukraine in their MTh program.

ZBCS is a missionary endeavor. It is a nonprofit organization. All visiting professors are in effect short term missionaries. You would need to raise your own airfare and bring 350 Euro (or equivalent) for food and transport.

Dear Fellow ETS Members,

The goal of this short communication from the Executive Committee of the Evangelical Theological Society is to
• clarify the impact of the resolutions adopted at Annual Meetings, including the most recent one
• reaffirm the Society’s foundational convictions
• express our commitment to review, renew, and refine our processes

Clarify the Impact of Resolutions Adopted at Annual Meetings
There have been a number of questions about the resolutions that were adopted at the 2015 Annual Business Meeting. Many of these relate to the content and meaning of the resolutions themselves, but the most urgent questions concern the impact of the resolutions—must members affirm them? Will they be used for screening membership? Do they have binding force, or indeed any force at all?

We have completed all of the paper proposal notifications. If you did not receive the email informing you of the status of your paper proposal please click on the "View My Paper Proposal(s)" link to the left in the "Annual Meeting Proposal System" box.

If your paper proposal was accepted, you will receive an email with your session details by July 15th. Please email any name, affiliation, and/or title corrections to meeting@etsjets.org by July 31st. Corrections received after July 31st will not be included in the printed program.

The ETS Executive Committee is pleased to announce the Annual Meeting Student Scholarship Program. This program is designed to help academically promising students who find participation in the Society economically prohibitive, or who come from a traditionally underrepresented group to get to know the Society, its functions, its leaders, and the role it plays in supporting conservative evangelical scholarship. The goal of the program is to encourage and support students, who might otherwise not participate in the Society, to appreciate the value of membership and the profitable part that it might play in their academic and ministry futures.

Scholarship recipients will receive a two-year benefit package including:

The first issue of a new peer-reviewed journal titled Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament is now available at www.jesot.org. The issue includes 5 new articles and 15 book reviews that can be freely downloaded online and can be purchased in print through Wipf and Stock Publishers. The journal features articles by Michael S. Heiser, Eugene H. Merrill, Joel E. Anderson, Todd Scacewater, and John F. Hobbins.