Welcome Dr. Davina Lopez!

Our inaugural Loy H. Witherspoon Professor of Christian Origins

We are thrilled to welcome Davina Lopez to our faculty as the first Loy H. Witherspoon Professor of Christian Origins. Dr. Witherspoon, a founding member of our department who died in 2017, generously endowed this professorship as part of his enduring legacy at Charlotte.

Davina C. Lopez is a historian of religion and biblical scholar. She teaches courses that consider questions about what religion is, where and how religion begins, and why religion matters as a human response to the world. Her research concerns the impulses, backgrounds, narratives, and problems that contribute to the formation of religious groups, across time and cultures, from the ancient near east to the contemporary United States. Her specific interests include the apostle Paul and his legacies, the study of the New Testament and Christian origins, intellectual histories of American biblical scholarship and the humanities, theory and method in the study of religion, discourses and practices of religious innovation, visual rhetoric, and the role of modern science and technology in contemporary forms of meaning-making. She has also published in the areas of teaching and learning about religion, histories of the study of religion and the humanities in the United States, and the intersection of biblical interpretation and public cultures.