Leaders

Frederick D. Aquino is Professor of Systematic Theology at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. Previously he was Professor of Theology and Philosophy in the Graduate School of Theology at Abilene Christian University (ACU); he was also the director of the philosophy minor at ACU. He earned his Ph.D. in Religious Studies (with an emphasis in systematic theology) from Southern Methodist University in 2000. Some of his publications include Communities of Informed Judgment (Catholic University of America Press, 2004), An Integrative Habit of Mind (Northern Illinois University Press, 2012), Receptions of Newman(Oxford University Press, 2015), co-edited with Benjamin J. King, The Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology (Oxford University Press, 2017), co-edited with William J. Abraham, The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman (Oxford University Press, 2018), co-edited with Benjamin J. King, and Perceiving Things Divine, co-edited with Paul Gavrilyuk (Oxford University Press, 2022).
Professor Aquino’s current projects focus on the relevance of John Henry Newman’s thought for issues in contemporary epistemology and other areas of philosophy (e.g., philosophy of religion, moral philosophy), the intersection of epistemology and theology, and the relevance of discernment in an age of noise. He is married to Michelle, and they have a son, David, and a daughter, Elizabeth. When he is not teaching and researching, Frederick enjoys traveling, taking walks, listening to music, viewing and discussing films, and watching the Buffalo Bills.

Grace Avenue Drama Troupe will perform an inspiring play entitled “Master, Is it I?”, where each disciple from Da Vinci’s Last Supper painting comes to life and tells about his relationship with Christ.  The drama is accented by original and poignant music.  The Grace Avenue Drama Troupe has performed this powerful production in area churches and prisons each Lenten season since 2009. 

Mark C. Grafenreed is a doctoral candidate in the field of Religion and Culture. He seeks to explore the interdisciplinary interplays between Critical Race Theory, theological education, black ecclesiology, black liberation theology, Methodism, and the evolving role of the universal Church in society. As a native of Memphis, Tennessee, Mark’s introduction to Texas was by way of SMU, which will be his third rodeo on “The Hilltop,” (B.A. in History in 1998 and M.Div. (summa cum laude) in 2018). Between stints at SMU, Mark moved to Houston in 2000 to attend Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law, where he finished magna cum laude and was licensed as a Texas attorney in 2003. Mark worked at several private civil law boutiques before launching his own practice, The Grafenreed Law Firm, PLLC, from 2010-2020.

Mark is an ordained as an Elder in Full Connection with the Texas Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church and is in involved with several community organizations, including the Houston Area Women’s Center, Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc., the United Negro College Fund, Houston Branch NAACP, American Leadership Forum (Class LIV), 100 Black Men of Metropolitan Houston, Inc., Fathers’ Auxiliary Chair, Missouri City-Sugar Land Chapter of Jack and Jill of America, Inc., and Texas Annual Conference Boards of Church and Society and Ordained Ministry. Mark is married to his wife, Dr. Clynita J. Grafenreed, and they have two sons, Jackson and Justin.

Frisco-based artist Richard Koehler is a graphic designer by day. His whimsical artwork focuses on themes of life, family and love created with a quirky twist.

Rob Kranz is a doctoral candidate in the field of Old Testament, focusing on the intersection of the Hebrew Bible and modern film and how that intersection provides avenues to open new lines of questioning, dialogue and textual interpretation.

His first career was in engineering software. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Purdue University and an MBA from the University of Houston. In 2018, he decided to pursue a lifelong dream to teach, research and write about the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at the university level. In 2019, he received a graduate certificate in biblical history and geography from Jerusalem University College in Israel. In 2021, Rob earned an M.A. in Old Testament from Abilene Christian University. He obtained a Th.M. from SMU’s Perkins School of Theology in 2022. In his free time, Rob enjoys spending time with his family, running, traveling, and cooking.

Susanne Scholz is Professor of Old Testament at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas. As a diasporic German-American feminist post-Holocaust scholar, she researches, writes, and teaches in the area of sacred text studies, primarily in Hebrew Bible studies.

Dr. Scholz holds a Ph.D. from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. Born and raised in Germany, she studied at the University of Mainz and the University of Heidelberg while preparing for the equivalent of the Master of Divinity. She also studied in a one-year study program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, prior to coming to the United States. During these years, she participated at an archaeological dig at Tell el-Oreme/Tel Kinrot on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee, led by one of her professors in Mainz. 

Dr. Scholz has taught at various departments of religious and theological undergraduate and graduate institutions, such as Fordham University, the College of Wooster, Merrimack College, the GTU, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has also lectured at various churches and religious organizations, whenever an opportunity presents itself. She likes to encourage her students and various audiences to take seriously the hermeneutical insight that readers, grounded in their social locations, create (biblical) meanings. She also enjoys explaining why it is ‘true’ that, contrary to popular opinion, sacred texts are inherently ambiguous, flexible, and elastic.

Mark W. Stamm is a 1995 graduate of Boston University (Th.D.) where he served as a research associate and consultant on the Boston University Worship, Music, and Religious Identity Project. An ordained elder in The United Methodist Church, he came to the Perkins faculty in July 2000 after serving seventeen years as a pastor of local congregations in Pennsylvania and Kentucky. At Perkins, he teaches courses in liturgical and sacramental history, theology, and practice. As Chapel Elder, he gives oversight to the school’s chapel program. He also served eight years as Abbot of the Order of Saint Luke. He has written several books related to the theology and practice of the sacraments including Let Every Soul Be Jesus’ Guest, A Theology of the Open Table (Abingdon Press, 2006) and Devoting Ourselves to the Prayers, A Baptismal Theology for the Church’s Intercessory Work (Discipleship Resources, 2014).

He is married to Margie Stamm, a nurse in the Dallas Independent School District, and they are the parents of two adult children.

Marcell Silva Steuernagel is assistant professor of church music and director of the Master of Sacred Music Program at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology. He holds a PhD in church music from Baylor University, an MA in Music Composition from Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil, and a BA in conducting and composition from the School of Music and Fine Arts of Paraná, Brazil. He served as Minister of Worship, Arts and Communication at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Curitiba, Brazil, for more than a decade and is an internationally active composer and performer, having performed in both popular and concert environments in Brazil, North America, Europe, Africa and Asia. He has released pop-rock albums, premiered choral and orchestral compositions in churches and universities, and edited hymnals. Marcell writes at the intersection of church music, theology, musicology and performance theory, both in Portuguese and English. His most recent monograph is Church Music Through the Lens of Performance, published on Routledge’s Congregational Music Studies series (2021).

Theodore Walker Jr. is Associate Professor of Ethics and Society at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and the 2018 SMU Maguire Public Scholar. His appointment at Perkins was preceded by one year of service to Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida, and three years service to Hood Theological Seminary at Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in Theological Inquiry from the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana. He is co-author with astronomer-astrobiologist Chandra Wickramasinghe of The Big Bang and God: An Astro-Theology …(Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), author of Mothership Connections: A Black Atlantic Synthesis of Neoclassical Metaphysics and Black Theology (State University of New York Press, 2004), and Empower the People: Social Ethics for the African-American Church (Orbis Books, 1991); and co-editor with Mihály Tóth (a Hungarian process philosopher) of Whiteheadian Ethics: Abstracts and Papers From the Ethics Section of the Philosophy Group at the 6th International Whitehead Conference At the University of Salzburg, July 2006(Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008). He contributes to and serves on the International Advisory Board for the journal Process Studies; and he contributes to and serves with Joseph Bracken as a Guest Editor for the Astro-Theology volumes in The Journal of Cosmology (see volumes 3, 6, 16, 19, 20, 22, and 30).  

James E. Woods, II is a bi-vocational pastor within the United Methodist Church and a life-vowed oblate of the Cistercian-Trappist community of the Assumption Abbey in Ava, Missouri. He holds a Doctor of Ministry from Perkins School of Theology at SMU where he serves as an adjunct lecturer, and he is currently a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. James is the author of Putting on the Mind of Christ: Contemplative Prayer and Holistic Unity. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2021.