Lewis Rambo

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Benton & Faye French Tulley
Research Professor of Psychology and Religion
lrambo@sfts.edu

Teaching Philosophy

My specific vocation at SFTS and the GTU is to serve as resource person and professor of the human sciences. I strive to transmit, appropriate, and critique psychology, anthropology, and sociology (focusing primarily on the therapeutic disciplines and the study of religion). In addition to teaching, research, writing, and counseling, my particular appropriation of the human sciences incorporates several specific themes: empathy, lived experience, and the complexity of the human predicament.

Empathy, which is the authentic desire and ability "to get inside another person's skin," is a capacity I strive to foster in myself and in others. Valuing the theme of "lived experience" means to affirm the importance of each person's and group's journey, history, and ethos, as well as to encourage perspectives that see our lives, both individual and corporate, as significant sources of information, insight, experience, and (dare I say?) revelation. I also seek to articulate the nature of the human predicament in the light of the human sciences. Given our human vulnerability, we often use our rational capacities for self-justification, denigration of others, and the creation of systems of thought that sacralize or institutionalize our own perspectives. An excellent seminary, such as SFTS, recognizes this tension and encourages discussion aimed explicitly at unearthing these presumptions so as to strengthen one's faith in God.

B.A. Abilene Christian University; M.Div. Yale University Divinity School; M.A. and Ph.D. University of Chicago.

San Francisco Theological Seminary

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