Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan

Dr. Kuan began his tenure at CST on July 1st, 2013, as the school’s 7th president. Before coming to CST, he was Dean and Professor of Hebrew Bible of the Theological School at Drew University. His research and teaching interests include ancient Israelite and Near Eastern history, Asian and Asian American hermeneutics, the Book of Job, as well as approaches to biblical instruction for the churches. As a theological educator, he is a strong proponent of religious pluralism and passionately committed to justice issues in the global and local contexts.

As a biblical scholar, Dr. Kuan has long been a visible advocate for LGBTQIA+ equality in churches and society who has been teaching against the misuse of biblical texts towards lesbian and gay Christians for decades. He served as an expert witness both in the investigation of the Sacramento 68 and in the church trial of a lesbian clergy in Seattle. He has marched and spoken out publicly in rallies and press conferences, as an Asian Pacific Islander clergy in support of LGBTQIA+ equality and marriage. Most recently, Dr. Kuan has continued using his voice and scholarship at the General Conference of The United Methodist Church’s ongoing conversations and decisions on the full inclusion and celebration of the LGBTQIA+ community.

President Kuan is the chair of the Member Council of the Hispanic Theological Initiative Consortium, a member of the Board of Commissioners of the Association for Theological Schools, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Theological Education in Southeast Asia.

Dr. Kuan previously served on the faculties of the Pacific School of Religion and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and the South East Asia Graduate School’s Regional Faculty. He also served as Old Testament Editor for the multi-volume New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible from 2006 to 2009, and served on the Council of the Society of Biblical Literature from 2007 to 2012.

In 2004, the Reconciling Ministries of the California-Nevada Annual Conference named him the winner of the Turtle Award for “sticking his neck out” for the LGBTQ community.

Selected Publications

“Biblical Interpretation and the Rhetoric of Violence and War,” Asia Journal of Theology
23, no. 2 (2009): 189-203.
Ways of Being, Ways of Reading: Asian-American Biblical Interpretation , co-edited with
Mary F. Foskett (Chalice, 2006).
“Reading Amy Tan Reading Job,” in Timothy J. Sandoval and Carleen R. Mandolfo,
eds., Relating to the Text: Interdisciplinary and Form-Critical Insights on the Bible , 263-
274 (Continuum, 2004).

“My Journey into Diasporic Hermeneutics,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 56, no. 1-
2 (2002): 50-54.
“Šamši-ilu and the Realpolitik of Israel and Aram-Damascus in the Eighth Century
BCE,” in J. Andrew Dearman and M. Patrick Graham, eds., The Land That I Will Show
You: Essays on the History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honor of J.
Maxwell Miller , 135-151 (Sheffield Academic, 2001).
“Diasporic Reading of a Diasporic Text: Identity Politics and Race Relations and the
Book of Esther,” in Fernando F. Segovia, ed., Interpreting beyond Borders , 161-173
(Sheffield Academic, 2000).
“Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World,” Voices from the Third
World 19, no. 1 (1996): 242-246.
Neo-Assyrian Historical Inscriptions and Syria-Palestine: Israelite/Judean-Tyrian-
Damascene Political and Commercial Relations in the Ninth–Eighth Centuries BCE
(Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary, 1995).
History and Interpretation: Essays in Honour of John H. Hayes , co-edited with M.
Patrick Graham and William P. Brown (Sheffield Academic, 1993).

Ph.D., Emory University, 1994
M.T.S., Southern Methodist University, 1986
B.Th., Trinity Theological College (Singapore), 1980