Chapman, Stephen

Biography

Stephen Chapman has taught at Duke since the fall of 2000. After majoring in religious studies at Yale (where he also sang in the a capella group, the Whiffenpoofs), he worked as a legislative assistant to a member of Congress before returning to Yale for 10 more years of graduate study. Ordained in the American Baptist Churches, U.S.A., he pastored several different Connecticut congregations while earning his Ph.D. in Old Testament. He then held a research position for two years at the University of Tübingen in Germany and served as a visiting scholar in Jerusalem at the Hebrew University. At Duke he is also faculty-in-residence in an undergraduate dormitory, where he lives with 116 first-year students. His research centers on issues of canon, hermeneutics and theological approaches to scriptural interpretation. An active participant in the Baptist World Alliance, he is a member of both its Workgroup on Theological Education and its Committee on Doctrine and Interchurch Cooperation.