Rev. Jeffrey Kuan
The Rev. Dr. Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Pacific School of Religion and a member of the Core Doctoral Faculty at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Trained as a biblical scholar, he received his Ph.D. degree in 1994 from Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.
Dr. Kuan is an ordained elder in the California-Nevada Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. He is a Vice President of the Board of Directors of the General Conference Board of Higher Education and Ministry, and Chair of the Division of Higher Education. He also chairs his Annual Conference Commission on Religion and Race.
As a seminary professor, he is most concerned about bridging the gap between the seminary and the church and thus, he is a strong proponent of lay theological education and speaks and preaches regularly in churches. His current research and teaching interests include contextual biblical interpretation, ancient Near Eastern history, the Books of Job and Joshua, and pedagogies for teaching the Bible in the local church.
As a biblical scholar, Dr. Kuan has long been a visible advocate for LGBT equality in churches and society. Beginning in the early 1990s, he has been teaching against the misuse of biblical texts towards lesbian and gay Christians. He served as an expert witness both in the investigation of the Sacramento 68, a group of United Methodist clergy, who co-officiated the holy union of a lesbian couple, and in the church trial of a lesbian clergy in Seattle. Rev. Kuan has marched and spoken out publicly in rallies and press conferences, as an Asian Pacific Islander clergy in support of LGBT equality and marriage.
