Dr. Angela N. Parker
Assistant Professor of New Testament and Greek
Dr. Angela N. Parker is assistant professor of New Testament and Greek at McAfee. She received her B.A. in religion and philosophy from Shaw University (2008), her M.T.S. from Duke Divinity School (2008-2010) and her Ph.D. in Bible, culture, and hermeneutics (New Testament focus) from Chicago Theological Seminary (2015). Before this position, Dr. Parker was assistant professor of Biblical Studies at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology for four years. While at The Seattle School, Dr. Parker received the Journal for Feminist Studies in Religion’s ESF New Scholar Award (2nd Place) for her article “One Womanist’s View of Racial Reconciliation in Galatians.” She teaches courses in New Testament, Greek Exegesis, the Gospel of Mark, the Corinthians Correspondence, and the Gospel of John. She is also working on a new course that engages womanist and feminist hermeneutics unto preaching.
In her research, Dr. Parker merges womanist thought and postcolonial theory while reading biblical texts with real lived experiences of actual bodies. In her forthcoming book entitled Bodies, Violence, & Emotions: A Womanist Study of the Gospel of Mark, Dr. Parker thinks through the issue of imperial violence and its effects on the bodies of Jesus, John the Baptizer, and the woman suffering in a flow of blood in Mark 5. This study allows Dr. Parker to engage real lived experiences of violence and emotions in contemporary society. Stemming from her work on womanist thought and postcolonial theory, Dr. Parker has forthcoming articles on reading Mary Magdalene in the Gospel of John with Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and Paul’s letter to Philemon in connection with the New York Times special issue on 1619 and the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to Virginia.
Seeking to connect her research to her activities as an ordained missionary Baptist clergyperson, Dr. Parker is currently gathering information for a book regarding Paul’s language of flesh, slavery, and surrogacy and how various streams of black Baptists engage these Pauline ideas. In addition to her teaching and research, Dr. Parker serves as co-chair for the Paul and Politics Seminar of the Society of Biblical Literature and is a committee member of American Academy of Religion’s Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities Committee.
Education
- Ph.D., Chicago Theological Seminary, 2015
- M.T.S, Duke University Divinity School, 2010
- B.A., Shaw University, 2008