Scholar of the Gospel of John to Speak at LRU

Gail O’Day

The Lenoir-Rhyne University Institute for Faith and Learning is pleased to welcome Gail O’Day to speak on “Friendship and the Gospel of John: Love as Christian Practice.” O’Day will be speaking in the Belk Centrum on campus at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 3. The event is free and open to the public.

O’Day is Dean and Professor of New Testament and Preaching at the Wake Forest University School of Divinity. She is a graduate of Brown University, earned a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and a doctorate in New Testament from Emory. She is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.

O’Day taught in the religion department at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, for a year before becoming assistant professor of New Testament at Eden Theological Seminary, a United Church of Christ seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1983.

She joined the Candler School of Theology faculty as assistant professor of biblical preaching in 1987, and was appointed the A.H. Shatford Professor of New Testament and Preaching in 1997. She was Senior Associate Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs, the chief academic officer for the School of Theology, from 2003 until her appointment to Wake Forest in 2010.

Her scholarly research focuses on the Gospel of John, the Bible and preaching, and the history of biblical interpretation. She has written a number of books and articles, including the commentary on the Gospel of John in The New Interpreters Bible (1996) and most recently, Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: A Guide (Abingdon Press, 2007). She is editor or co-editor of several volumes, including the Oxford Access Bible (Oxford University Press, 1999) and the Theological Bible Commentary (Westminster John Knox Press, 2009). She was editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature from 1999-2006 and is currently General Editor of the Society of Biblical Literature book series, Early Christianity and its Literature.

O’Day’s presentation will focus on the friendship aspects of the Gospel of John. Friendship is a pivotal social and theological category in the Gospel of John, defining Jesus’ relationship to his followers and his followers’ relationship to one another. To read the Gospel of John through the lens of friendship positions God’s love made tangible in the incarnation at the center of the theological conversation. Friendship also becomes the way Christians can live out God’s love in the world.