PITTSBURGH SEMINARY PROFESSOR RELEASES BOOK ABOUT JOHN CALVIN AS REFUGEE THEOLOGIAN
The Rev. Dr. Kenneth J. Woo, P. C. Rossin Associate Professor of Church History and Historical Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, has published John Calvin, Refugee Theologian: Introducing a Reformer in Exile (Baker Academic, 2025).
The book reintroduces the sometimes-renowned, sometimes-infamous John Calvin as a pastoral practitioner and theologian embedded in a historical moment of religious persecution and political exile. Dr. Woo argues Calvin’s location as a religious refugee ministering to fellow exiles provides crucial context for the interpretation of the reformer’s works, including sermons, biblical commentaries, letters, and the seminal Institutes. He invites readers to reexamine contemporary Reformed traditions as ones rooted in a history of providing pastoral care from the margins and to reencounter Calvin as neither hero nor villain but as conversation partner. The book highlights, for example, the reformer’s repeated revisitation of the biblical character David and offers this sense of connection with a fellow God-fearing exile as an important indication of Calvin’s own theological orientation and perspective on his ministry. Refugee Theologian will connect with scholars and theologically-curious laity alike.
Dr. Woo is a Reformation scholar whose research interests span the development of the Reformed tradition, the intersection of biblical interpretation and church history, and historical religious responses to persecution and mass migration. He is the author of Nicodemism and the English Calvin, 1544-1584 (Brill, 2019), which examines the complex ways in which John Calvin and his followers employed theological polemics against religious dissimulation to establish and enforce social and ecclesial boundaries in a variety of 16th century contexts. His next book, John Calvin, Women, and Gender (co-edited with Jennifer Powell McNutt), is forthcoming with Brill in 2026. Dr. Woo’s work has also appeared in Harvard Theological Review, Church History and Religious Culture, Concordia Theological Quarterly, Reformation and Renaissance Review, Interpretation, Theology Today, and Sixteenth Century Journal.
An ordained minister of the Reformed Church in America (RCA), Dr. Woo pastored a multicultural congregation near Washington, D.C., for six years, as well as serving in campus ministry and in churches in New Jersey, Virginia, and North Carolina. He chairs the candidates committee of his classis, which oversees the progress of individuals pursuing ordination in the RCA. He is a member of the Association of Asian/North American Theological Educators (AANATE), a trustee of the Foundation for Theological Education in Asia and the Pacific (FTEAP), and a trustee and secretary-treasurer of the Calvin Studies Society. Dr. Woo holds degrees from the College of William and Mary (B.A., English), Westminster Theological Seminary (M.Div.), and Duke University (Th.D.).