Seminary of the Southwest recently announced that the Rev. Benjamin King, Ph.D., has been named Academic Dean after serving the past year in that role in an interim capacity.
“During this past academic year, Ben King proved himself to be an invaluable asset as interim Academic Dean,” said Dr. Scott Bader-Saye, dean and president. “In fact, over the past few months the faculty has actively campaigned for me to make this position permanent. This signaled to me that they were seeing what I was seeing—that Ben is a gifted leader with both the organizational and relational skills needed to do this job well. In addition, he is an accomplished scholar who will be a great support to the faculty in their own writing and scholarship. I am very pleased that he has said yes to the invitation to remove ‘interim’ from his title!”
“When I arrived at Southwest I found a wonderful team of colleagues and a great group of students, all of whom are making a difference in the Church or in the field of counseling,” shared King. “I soon realized that the commitment of this seminary to be a place of Beloved Community was one I have been working on throughout my 25 years of ministry as parish priest, professor, and administrator. I relish the opportunity to maintain the strong academic foundations on which our graduates from our theology programs, from the Iona Collaborative, and from our counseling and spiritual direction programs will ground their lives of service.”
Since 2023, King has also served as the Duncalf-Villavoso Professor of Church History at Southwest and teaches the core courses in Church History as well as electives in Anglican theology and history. His current areas of research are the Oxford Movement, particularly the theology of John Henry Newman; the development of the Anglican Communion; and the Episcopal Church’s historic entanglement with slavery.
