The full-time OE faculty, listed below, live with their families in the small community of Lincoln, a place professors and staff have made a home since the late 1970s. We welcome our students to join us in our learning and faith journeys and hope they will include us in theirs. We take honest questions seriously and try to honor genuine doubt or resistance. We’ve come to trust that God can handle anger and fear, confusion and uncertainty as well as the many questions the ongoing conversation around here provokes. We want to be patient listeners and faithful mentors as our students build foundations for their own convictions.
John Linton
John teaches Bible, theology, and philosophy. He reads Greek, Hebrew and French. John studied chemistry and philosophy in college, but he earned his doctorate in Hebrew and Semitic studies because he wants to understand the Bible. John often lectures on difficult biblical texts or theological themes, but his best work probably occurs late at night. Students stop by his house to share a cup of tea and talk about their faith, and often find themselves exploring refreshing new ways to read the Bible.
Heidi Gehman
Heidi (OE 87) returns to the woods of Oregon by way of a long journey that carried her to India, Guatemala, Germany, and, eventually, Connecticut—travels that were interrupted by long years in graduate school at Princeton Seminary (M.Div.) and the University of Chicago (Ph.D). Her graduate work was in philosophical and religious ethics, and she has taught at Fairfield University, Wesleyan University, and Hartford Seminary—all in Connecticut—and most recently worked at Princeton Seminary. An avid runner and wilderness enthusiast, Heidi has her eyes set on the Portland Marathon and several canyons on the northern border of Yosemite. She can’t pass up a genuine moral dilemma, and loves to help her students learn how to look and see what it is that makes life so complicated and so worthwhile.
Kelton Cobb
Kelton (Tad) has taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in the areas of Christian theology, church history, and comparative religions. He grew up in Colorado, then used his years in college and graduate school as an opportunity to embark on an extended road trip, including long layovers in Oregon, New Jersey (M.Div., Princeton Seminary), Germany, and Iowa (Ph.D., University of Iowa). Before finding his way back to Oregon, he taught at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and for many years at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut. He has published one book called The Blackwell Guide to Theology and Popular Culture, and is working on another book on the moral lessons Christianity has acquired through its own transgressions—his attempt to reflect sympathetically on the long and eventful road trip of church history.
Melissa Sexton
Melissa has split her time between the woods of Michigan and of Oregon since her first fall in the Oregon Cascades (OE 03). Her graduate work at the University of Oregon (PhD, June 2012) focused on American literature and environmental criticism, leading to her current interests in science studies, cultural representations of environment, and American nature writing. Her work teaching environmental literature classes to undergraduates made her passionate about discussing the effects of literary and popular culture on environmental practice. During the summers, Melissa worked as an outdoor educator, counselor, and assistant director at summer camps in Michigan, which made her passionate about outdoor adventure programming and teaching children ecology. After five years of living in a student-owned cooperative in Eugene, Oregon, Melissa is also excited to have conversations about sustainability and intentional communities with students at Lincoln.
Anna Maria Johnson
Anna Maria Johnson’s writing brings together her diverse interests in the visual arts, science and nature, family systems, and spirituality. She studied fiction and creative non-fiction at Vermont College of Fine Art (MFA July 2012), where her critical thesis explored image patterns in Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She has taken coursework in spiritual formation at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. Her short stories and essays have been published in Ruminate Magazine, Numéro Cinq, DreamSeeker Magazine, and The Mennonite, as well as in the anthology, Tongue-screws and Testimonies. Anna Maria writes, gardens, and makes art along the Shenandoah River’s north fork, where she has lived for seven years with photographer Steven David Johnson and their two daughters.
Steve Johnson
Steve Johnson (OE 93) joins the faculty for the fall 2012 semester. Steve is on sabbatical leave from Eastern Mennonite University where he has taught Visual and Communication Arts courses for the past seven years (MFA, Savannah College of Art and Design). Steve loves photography, whirlpools, literature, metaphor, form, salamanders, rivers, place, science writing, and vernal ponds. He’s interested in helping students wrestle with representation, vision, voice and meaning. When not teaching, he’s often down by some river or stream exploring the natural world though the lens of his camera. He’ll be spending the spring semester at Lincoln collaborating on a series of photo essays about the ecology of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument with his wife, writer Anna Maria Johnson. Steve’s imagery has appeared in Orion, National Geographic Traveler, Ruminate Magazine, Rock and Sling, and Blue Ridge Country.
