Rate My Professor Ken Sawyer

Kenneth Sawyer, known as Ken Sawyer, serves as Professor of Church History at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois. He first joined the McCormick community in 1980 as a staff member of the JKM Library, began teaching as an adjunct instructor in 1988, and was appointed to the regular faculty in 1993. Sawyer earned his Ph.D. in the History of Christianity from the University of Chicago Divinity School, with a dissertation titled “Secret Walkings Before the Lord”: The Devotional Theology of Increase Mather, 1639-1723. His research specializations encompass Reformation topics, Anglo-American Reformed groups, Puritanism, New School and Old School Presbyterianism, and issues of gender and power in the history of Christianity. He has published articles on early Christian history in Egypt, contemporary multiculturalisms, and the uses of technology in theological education. Sawyer teaches a range of courses including History Survey I, Reading the Church Mothers and Fathers, Calvin Seminar, Reformed Tradition, Reformations of the Sixteenth Century, Women in the History of Western Christianity, Readings in the History of Western Christian Spirituality, American Presbyterian History, and Seminar on Reinhold Niebuhr. He also instructs at Stateville Penitentiary and Logan Correctional Center, and frequently offers adult education classes throughout the Chicago area. A member of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Sawyer has contributed to the seminary's legacy over four decades.

Sawyer's publications include the co-authored book History of McCormick Seminary (1975-2005) with G.D. Little (2008). Notable chapters feature “Christianity in Egypt and North Africa” in African Christianity: An African Story, edited by Ogbu U. Kalu (2005, revised 2007), and “Libraries and Multicultural Theological Education: Beyond Nostalgia” in Shaping Beloved Community: Multicultural Theological Education, edited by David Esterline and Ogbu U. Kalu (2006). Other works comprise “The Reformations Continue” in Reformations Reset (2018), “Not a Festschrift, but a Streitschrift for Calvin: Bolsec’s Histoire” in Subject to None, Servant of All: Festschrift for Kurt Hendel (2015), and articles such as “McCormick Seminary and the Great Fire” in In Trust (October 2021), “Observing Multiculturalism” in Journal of Religious & Theological Information (2004), and “Rumi and Haji Bektash Veli as Mediating Leaders in the Islamization of Anatolia 1100 c.e. - 1350 c.e.” in Currents in Theology and Mission (2021). He served as guest editor for “A Breadth of Belonging: Navigating Interreligious and Intercultural Spaces” in Currents in Theology and Mission (Spring 2021) and authored extended bio-bibliographical essays on George L. Robinson and John Timothy Stone in Faces of Fundamentalism (2021).