Profile: Dr. John P. Burgess

John P. Burgess has taught at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary since 1998. Previously he was Associate for Theology in the Office of Theology and Worship, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). He was awarded his Ph.D. in Christian theology from the University of Chicago. His publications include The East German Church and the End of Communism, Why Scripture Matters: Reading the Bible in a Time of Church Conflict, After Baptism: Shaping the Christian Life, Encounters with Orthodoxy, and Holy Rus’: The Rebirth of Orthodoxy in the New Russia. In 2011, Burgess was a Fulbright Scholar at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University in Moscow, Russia, in 2014-15 a research fellow at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey, and in 2018-19 a Fulbright Scholar at the State University in Belgorod, Russia. His current research focuses on Christian conceptions of “spiritual freedom.”

John teaches systematic theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, he is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and travel frequently to eastern Germany and Russia, interested in what the experience of Christians in those places can teach Christians in North America. While his research interests are broad, he is especially committed to offering theological leadership to the North American church. In a time in which the church is losing cultural privilege and social influence, he believes that renewed attention to the Scriptures and the church’s greatest theological teachers and traditions can give the church the orientation that it needs for finding its way into the future. He is also very interested in worship and how it shapes the church theologically. Professional Societies to which he is a member include: American Academy of Religion, American Theological Society, Association for Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies, Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, Karl Barth Society of North America and Society of Christian Ethics.