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Senior Research Fellow

Revd Dr Jacob Cook

PhD Fuller Theological Seminary (2018); MDiv Mercer University (2010); BA Friends University (2007)

Revd Dr Jacob Alan Cook is Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Eastern Mennonite Seminary and Co-Director for The Shalom Collaboratory. This program creates new theological formation spaces to promote practices that make for just peace. Jake teaches courses and facilitates workshops around moral formation and discernment, adaptive leadership and tough conversations, and studying and developing local communities, as well as introductory courses in theology, ethics, and philosophy.

 Jake’s first book, Worldview Theory, Whiteness, and the Future of Evangelical Faith (Fortress Academic, 2021), is an interdisciplinary study that brings together historical theology, psychology, sociology, and philosophy to show critical flaws in American evangelical worldview theory and to offer a constructive alternative, grounded in the theology and witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His current book project is a practical theology of freedom and agency that builds constructively from the radical, little-b baptist tradition to be published in the Perspectives on Baptist Identities series jointly produced by Mercer University Press and the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion. Jake has also published, presented, and taught around topics like a theology of identity, theories of (non)violence, formation for peacemaking, and adaptive leadership.

 Jake earned his PhD in Christian Ethics from Fuller Theological Seminary, where he studied with the great Baptist peacemaker, Glen Harold Stassen, and served as the associate director of the Just Peacemaking Initiative. Prior to his work with Eastern Mennonite Seminary, he led research on moral formation as a teacher-scholar postdoctoral fellow at Wake Forest University School of Divinity.

 Jake is ordained to the gospel ministry by a church affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and regularly serves churches as a teacher, facilitator, and consultant.

Research Interests

Peace and Conflict Studies, Moral Formation, Identity Ethics, (Ana)baptist Theology and Ethics, Social Ethics, Community Development and Social Change Theories, Adaptive Leadership, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Publications

“A New Fundamentalism Rising: The Southern Baptist Battle against the CRT ‘Worldview,’” Journal of American Culture 47, no. 1 (2024): 41–49.

“Teaching AI about Ethics and the Gospel,” The Presbyterian Outlook (March 2024): 20–25.

Worldview Theory, Whiteness, and the Future of Evangelical Faith. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2021.

Book Chapters

“Everything, Nothing, Something: Trading in World-Viewing for Everyday Faithfulness in Peacemaking and Sustainability.” In The Gospel of Peace in a Violent World: Christian Nonviolence for Communal Flourishing, edited by Shawn M. Graves and Marlena Graves. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2022.

“Toward an Incarnational Theology of Identity.” In Justice and the Way of Jesus: Christian Ethics and the Incarnational Discipleship of Glen Stassen, edited by David P. Gushee and Reggie L. Williams. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2020.

“War, Nonviolence, and Just Peacemaking.” In Discerning Ethics: Diverse Christian Responses to Divisive Moral Issues, edited by Hak Joon Lee and Timothy A. Dearborn. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2020.

Other Activities

“‘Everyone Who Acts Responsibly Becomes Guilty’: Reading Bonhoeffer’s Free Responsible Action, Relative Sinlessness, and Participation in Conspiracy through the Lens of Moral Injury,” Bonhoeffer: Theology and Social Analysis Unit and Martin Luther and Global Lutheran Traditions Unit, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, San Diego, California, November 2024.

“Is Wokeness a New Religion? How Evangelical Worldview Theory Activates Fundamentalism against Critical Theories and Enables Misdirection about Religious Freedom,” Comparative Approaches to Religion and Violence Unit, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, San Diego, California, November 2024.

“Living the Sermon on the Mount in the Shadows of the Empire: Comparing Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s and Eberhard Arnold’s Community Formation Models,” National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion Annual Meeting, Raleigh, North Carolina, May 2024.

“The Perils and Promise of Religion in Work for Peace, Justice, and Social Change,” workshop facilitated at Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Virginia, February 2024.

“Founded in the Right Now of a Future,” sermon delivered at Colloquium 2024, International Baptist Theological Study Centre, Amsterdam, Netherlands, January 2024.

“Moral Formation: Adaptive Leadership in Situations of Conflict,” The Episcopal Diocese of Texas Clergy Conference, Camp Allen, Navasota, Texas, October 2023.

“An Intentional Counter-Witness to Reactionary Authoritarianism,” Global Mennonite Peacebuilding Conference and Festival, Harrisonburg, Virginia, June 2023.

“Connecting the Dots: Religious Liberty, the Common Good, and White Evangelical Activism against CRT in Public Schools,” National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion Annual Meeting, Boiling Springs, North Carolina, May 2023.

“The W(h)it(e)ness of Worldview Theory: On the Troubled Genealogy of a Favorite Framework,” Philosophy Speaker Series, Department of Philosophy, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, March 2023.

“Between Don Quixote and Walter Mitty: Ideal Visions, Practical Problems, and Film in Moral Formation,” International Conference on Religion and Film, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands, June 2022.

“Where It All (Re)Starts: The Image of God, Created Sociality, and the Basis of ‘Our’ Freedom,” National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion Annual Meeting, Nashville, Tennessee, May 2022.

“A Free, Responsible Approach to Actively Identifying (with) Jesus in Interreligious and Other Complex Contexts,” Bonhoeffer: Theology and Social Analysis Unit and Christian Spirituality Unit, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, San Antonio, Texas, November 2021.

“Reconceiving the Hopes for and Hindrances to the Conversion of a Plural Self,” Religious Conversions Unit, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, San Antonio, Texas, November 2021.