by Robert Williamson, Jr. ‘01

For Martha Moore-Keish, the path to becoming a professor of Christian theology led through India. After growing up in a Presbyterian church in Tallahassee, Florida, Moore-Keish attended Harvard, where she studied comparative religion. Through her studies, she began to develop a sense of call to ministry. “Going to college in a place where being a practicing Christian was not the norm, I felt called to show that Christianity could be something that people who were smart could yet be committed to,” she explains.

At the same time, Moore-Keish was discovering an appreciation for the eastern traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism. After college graduation, she accepted a Rotary Fellowship for a year of study and cultural immersion in West Bengal. “It was so absolutely different

in every way from the Protestant religious worldview I had been accustomed to,” she says of the way of life in India. “It was fascinating to think about what kind of world people live in that is so different from my own.”

 But there amidst the difference, in the ritual life of popular Hinduism, Moore-Keish discovered new insights into her own tradition. “Something is so profoundly attractive about the popular religious culture in India—the images, the ritual, the smells, the sounds,” she says. “It led me to think about the ritual practices in Christianity, about baptism and Eucharist and their significance for the church.” That interest in the liturgical elements of Christianity, which she first discovered in India, has continued to guide her life as a scholar, from her doctoral dissertation to her subsequent research and teaching.

It was during her studies at Union Theological Seminary [now Union-PSCE] in Richmond, Virginia, that Moore-Keish began to discover a passion for the academic study of theology, which she describes as “a place that I could bring together all the bits of who I had discovered myself to be.” She explains, “In the study of history of religions or comparative religions, as much as I loved it, I felt a hunger to be able to speak about God and the divine in a way that wasn’t in quotation marks. I wanted to speak normatively about God and not just descriptively, to be in conversation with the church about who God is and who we are to be.”

After receiving her Ph.D. from Emory University, Moore-Keish served in the Presbyterian Church (USA) Office of Theology and Worship in Louisville. “That turned out to be a really wonderful three years,” she says, “because I was able to use my theological training to facilitate conversation in the church about what we are doing when we worship.” Her time in the national office prepared Moore-Keish well for her teaching at Columbia Seminary, where she continues to focus on the worship life of the church.

In January, Moore-Keish will be teaching a Doctor of Ministry course on liturgical theology in which pastors will be invited to think about the liturgical practices of their own congregations and the theologies that emerge from particular liturgical events. In a time in which many churches are experiencing conflicts over worship styles, Moore-Keish hopes the course will help pastors think constructively about the significance of liturgical practices. “There always have been and always will be varieties of worship,” she explains. “That should not be a cause for concern. The real question is how we make judgments about different expressions of worship and their theological significance for particular congregations at this particular time.”

While Moore-Keish has developed liturgical theology as an area of particular expertise, she is broadly interested in historical and constructive theology, especially as they relate to the preparation of pastors for the ministry. “Theology is where it all comes together,” she explains. “I hope Master of Divinity students come away from my courses with a sense of how their theological convictions have a real relationship with how they respond to a particular pastoral situation—what they say to someone who is dying, how they conduct a funeral, or how they respond to an editorial in the newspaper. We cannot simply draw a straight line from a biblical passage to a contemporary situation. Theological work is what happens in the middle, and that is what I hope I’m equipping my students to do.”

In a recent course, Moore-Keish helped students gain a historical perspective on Christology, how the church has understood the person of Jesus Christ throughout the ages. “Christians have understood Jesus Christ in a variety of ways through the centuries, and they have asked different questions in different historical periods,” she says. “That’s one thing I wanted my students to pay attention to, noticing how the question itself is not the same from age to age. What’s at stake for people changes. Why people even ask the question changes. Then, with that kind of historical perspective, we could look at recent trends in Christology and think along the lines of what it all means for us.”

Beyond teaching in Columbia’s degree programs, Moore-Keish recently taught a course in the Youth Ministry Leadership Initiative (YMLI), a joint venture between Columbia Seminary and the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta that provides formal theological

education for lay persons engaged in youth ministry. “It was fabulous!” she says. “The participants had burning questions about how theology relates to the lives of their youth, so the issues were very real and tangible. How we think about the interreligious question, of course, was a big one. And the question of sexuality is always in the background when you are talking about youth. What does it mean for youth to live a faithful life in today’s world? It was great fun, offering them some theological tools for addressing the issues. It was a very receptive group.”

Now entering her third year at Columbia, where she serves as assistant professor of theology, Moore-Keish says she feels privileged to be part of Columbia’s faculty. “It’s a wonderful place to be,” she says. “You come in and people automatically treat you like an equal. It’s extraordinary.”