GTU Voices - Interview | David Lunceford, Presidential Scholarship Recipient

David Lunceford is a recipient of the Presidential Scholarship for the 2024-2025 academic year. Join us in welcoming him to the GTU!

GTU: What were the formative influences in your life—people, places, experiences—that led you to where you are today?

David Lunceford: I think my introduction to feminist and womanist biblical interpretation is the moment in the course of my academic experience that did the most to lead me to where I am today. Feminist and womanist readers showed me the way off the path of conventional biblical interpretation and pointed me toward a more beautiful form of reading. They taught me to read with a commitment to liberation, to be critical, to be constructive, not to sideline my imagination or creativity while reading, and not to erase myself from my reading, but instead to welcome my own particularity, letting it color my reading.

GTU: How would you describe your academic interests?

DL: Most broadly, I am interested in contextual biblical interpretation. I am especially interested in questions about how to read the Bible ethically as a white Christian in an antiblack world. Right now, I am planning to study the figure of death in the book of Ecclesiastes as an alternative to the dominant white Christian figure of death as an enemy. I hope to do this work in conversation with the work of critical and constructive theologians as well as critical theorists, several of whom have already proved indispensable to me as a biblical interpreter.

GTU: What drew you to attend GTU for your Doctoral studies?

DL: The GTU’s support for interdisciplinary work as well as its embrace of people whose dedication to critical inquiry is matched with religious devotion are what most excited me about coming to the GTU. Plus, I love California!

GTU: What are you most looking forward to in your Doctoral studies at the GTU?

DL: I am very excited to work with my advisor, LeAnn Flesher, to write essays for classes and eventually a dissertation, to learn from the GTU’s faculty and students, and to become friends with people in the GTU community. I also look forward to changing as a person as a result of my time here.