Peter Ajer
Assistant Professor of New Testament
Peter Ajer holds a Bachelor of Sacred Theology from Pontifical Urbaniana University, a Licentiate in Sacred Scripture from the Pontifical Biblical Institute, and a PhD in Biblical Studies (New Testament) from the Graduate Theological Union with an allied focus in Political Science, focusing on Peace and Conflict Studies. Ajer has been a lecturer in New Testament Studies at Church Divinity School of the Pacific and part-time faculty at the University of San Francisco and Saint Mary’s College of California. He has taught Bible courses, both Old and New Testament, and Human Rights Ethics. His current research explores the gathering motif in the Fourth Gospel and the social construction of space in Paul’s letter to Philemon. Ajer was born and brought up in Uganda and is the author of The Death of Jesus and the Politics of Place in the Gospel of John, Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016.
Email: pajer@bexleyseabury.edu
Assistant Professor of Old Testament
Kay Apigo is a scholar of the Old Testament with expertise in Tradition History, Reception Criticism, Children’s Studies, and Children’s Literature Studies. She holds a PhD in Biblical Studies from Union Theological Seminary (Old Testament/Hebrew Bible) where she wrote her dissertation, “YHWH’s Flood, Noah’s Ark: Adaptations of the Genesis Flood Story Then and Now,” on the development of the Noah’s Ark story in children’s Bibles throughout American history. Her experiences as a biblical scholar and a mother of two young children have led to an understanding of the Bible as a multigenerational story at the core of its culture and the identity of its ancient audience. She brings this language of storytelling to her teaching of the Bible, presenting the Old Testament as literature told and retold in the context of human history. Kay is a classically trained singer and a lover of music, art, and theater. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, David, a Physicist, their two children (a three-year-old son and a ten-month-old daughter), and their Tibetan Spaniel, where they spend most of their time cooking together, hiking local trails, and renovating their recently purchased fixer upper.
Email: kapigo@bexleyseabury.edu
Mary Crist
Visiting Professor of Education and Indigenous Studies
The Rev. Canon Mary Crist, Ed.D., is enrolled Blackfeet (Amskapi Pikuni) from the Douglas family in Babb on the reservation Montana. She is a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, serving at St. Michael’s Riverside. She is married to The Rev. Will Crist, the mother of an adult son and a daughter, grandmother of five, and great grandmother of one. She earned the Doctor of Education at Teachers College Columbia University in New York, the Master of Divinity at The Episcopal Theological School/Claremont School of Theology, and the
Bachelor of Arts at The University of California Berkeley. She is the former Dean of the Metcalf School of Education and professor in the Online and Professional Studies Division at California Baptist University in Riverside. She has been active in Indigenous Ministry in The
Episcopal Church for many years, as a member of the Executive Council’s Committee on Indigenous Ministry, and is now a member of the Indigenous Missioner’s Advisory Council. She was a preacher at the Holy Eucharist featuring Native Americans at General Convention in 2012.
Email: mcrist@bexleyseabury.edu
Jason A. Fout
Academic Dean, Associate Professor of Anglican Theology
Jason Fout (Seabury ’01) is Academic Dean and Associate Professor of Anglican Theology at Bexley Seabury. Fout joined the faculty in 2009. He has degrees from the University of Cambridge, Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was ordained a priest in 2001, and has served in the Diocese of Western Michigan and the Diocese of Ely (Church of England), and is presently licensed in the Dioceses of Ohio and Southern Ohio. Fout teaches courses on Anglican theology and ethics, Christology, and liturgics as well as a course on urbanism, architecture and city planning for church and community leaders. He also teaches the Learning from London travel course on contemporary mission and evangelism. His research interests include constructive theology, particularly Christology and issues around divine and human agency; theological exegesis of scripture; historical and contemporary Anglican theology; theological analysis of the built environment; Scriptural Reasoning; and missional theology.
Email: jfout@bexleyseabury.edu
Lizette Larson-Miller
Professor of Liturgy and Sacramental Theology.
The Rev. Canon Lizette Larson-Miller, PhD, is canon precentor for the Diocese of Huron (Anglican Church of Canada) and the former Huron-Lawson Chair of Liturgical Studies at Huron University College (concluding on June 30, 2023). Her first degrees were in music (conducting and church music from the University of Southern California), she then earned an additional MA in liturgical studies (St. John’s, Collegeville), and a PhD in liturgical history and sacramental theology (GTU, Berkeley). She is the author of four books and numerous articles, including Sacramentality Renewed (2016), and past president of both Societas Liturgica and IALC (International Anglican Liturgical Consultation, a network of the Anglican Communion). She was ordained in the Diocese of Los Angeles in 2003 and has served in a number of Episcopal and Anglican (Canadian) parishes in addition to teaching at Loyola Marymount University, University of Notre Dame, CDSP, and Huron.
She and her husband Steve have two daughters, one cat, and live in Berkeley, California (when not in Canada or elsewhere!) Hiking, gardening (mostly out of necessity) and traveling are favourite past times, along with hopes to get back to swimming and surfing.
Email: llarson3@uwo.ca
Julie Lytle
Director of Distributive and Lifelong Learning Initiatives, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership
Julie Lytle joined the faculty in 2018 as Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Director of Distributive and Lifelong Learning Initiatives. She has degrees from Boston College, The University of Notre Dame, and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Julie teaches courses in congregational development, digital evangelism, educational leadership, and faith formation and has extensive expertise in the area of distance education. She was on faculty at the Episcopal Divinity School and developed their distributive distance learning model for masters degrees prior to her appointment at Bexley Seabury. Her research interests explore the intersection of theology, faith formation, and technology and the ways people connect with one another and resources to enact the Dream of God.
Email: jlytle@bexleyseabury.edu
Director of Doctor of Ministry Programs, Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology and Leadership
A native of Rochester, New York where her curiosity about life was nurtured in her parents’ truck manufacturing company. A graduate of The College of Wooster, The Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and Phillips Theological Seminary, she was ordained in the former Lutheran Church in America (now ELCA) in 1986 and has served as a parish pastor, pastoral counselor, campus pastor, non-profit CEO and seminary professor since that time. She is an avid reader, especially of new fiction and first person short stories. She is moving steadily toward a goal of hiking in every national park in the US. She has musical theatre and Schubert lieder on her I-pod and a pile of books are her night table. Her home continues to be in Columbus, Ohio and she will be commuting to Chicago on a regular basis with her new responsibilities at Bexley Seabury. Emlyn is the spouse of Dr. Robert Ward, Director of Choral Activities at The Ohio State University.
Email: eott@bexleyseabury.edu
Director of Formation and Contextual Learning; Assistant Professor of the Practice of Ministry.
A Medievalist by training, Eileen completed both bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Notre Dame and taught church history and theology at Marian High School in Mishawaka, Indiana. Prior to ordination, Eileen was a campus minister at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. In 2004 Eileen received her M.Div. from Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. and was ordained in the Diocese of Southern Ohio. From 2007 to 2018 Eileen was the rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Waukegan, IL. She is currently completing her thesis for the D.Min. in Congregational Development at Bexley Seabury. Her practical ministry specialties are building maintenance and church finance.
Having grown up along the Mississippi river in Iowa and Wisconsin, Eileen has a keen interest in the intersection of economic and environmental justice and their impact on communities. She serves on the steering team of Lake County United (an IAF affiliate), co-chairs Clean Power Lake County, and is a founding board member of Waukegan to College. She and her husband, Ross Shanley-Roberts, recently moved to Highland Park. They have two daughters and two pugs.
View Eileen Shanley-Roberts’ CV.
Email: eshanleyroberts@bexleyseabury.edu
Affiliate
Tom Ferguson is an Affiliate Faculty member at Bexley Seabury and Rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Sandwich, MA. From 2011-2016 he served as Academic Dean and Associate Professor of Church History at Bexley Seabury. Tom teaches courses in Constitution and Canons, Anglican and Episcopal History, Global Anglicanism, and ecumenical and interreligious relations. He has a particular interest and passion for ecumenical and interrelgiious cooperation and collaboration, having previously served as Deputy to the Presiding Bishop for Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations. His history of Christianity, Episcopal Story: Birth and Rebirth was published by Church Publishing in the series Church’s Teachings for a Changing World.
Email: tferguson@bexleyseabury.edu
Lisa Withrow
Affiliate
Affiliate Professor of Pastoral Theology and Leadership
With an M.Div. from Duke Divinity School, a Ph.D. in Leadership Studies from the University of Glasgow (Divinity faculty), and three certificates from Cornell University’s S.C. Johnson School of Management in Executive Leadership, High-Performance Leadership, and Change Leadership, Lisa Withrow has an up-to- date portfolio of trends, research, and challenges facing higher education, the church, and businesses. In her prior full-time work as a professor of leadership and academic dean, Lisa crafted courses and publications based on the intersections of research for leadership excellence, conflict management, and organizations;
cultural and structural systems. Having left full-time higher education in 2019, she became a full-time Gestalt and International Coaching Federation-certified leadership coach. As the Founder and Principal of her coaching and consulting business, Clear Transition Strategies (cleartransitionstrategies.com), Lisa currently spends time traveling throughout North America, and online with international clients, coaching and consulting with individuals, teams, and groups in religious, educational, and secular organizations. Her
specialties include leadership formation and development, organizational systems, and conflict management. Lisa is the author of 5 books and contributor to/editor of 6, and serves as affiliate faculty at Bexley-Seabury Seminary in Chicago for master’s and doctoral students.
Email: lwithrow@bexleyseabury.edu