Dr. Mary Dance Berry

Biography

Dr. Mary Dance Berry is a teacher and student of the Old Testament. She is passionate about the importance of the Old Testament for the Church, and she particularly enjoys wrestling with difficult themes and texts in the canon. She comes to Campbell University Divinity School after completing her doctoral work at Duke University, Master of Divinity at Duke Divinity School, and undergraduate degree at Sweet Briar College.

Mary teaches courses on biblical literature and Biblical Hebrew as well as the practice of teaching the Bible. In her classroom and scholarship, she advocates for reading the Bible with others from different contexts and with different concerns. Her dissertation placed the ecological hermeneutics of Euro-American evangelical, Euro-American mainline, and African Christian scholars in dialogue and used the fruits of that dialogue to examine nonhuman creation in Joel, Amos, and Jonah.

As a graduate student, Mary explored ethical questions concerning nonhuman creation in the Bible as a Graduate Fellow and a Religion and Public Life Fellow at Duke’s Kenan Institute. She continues to consider questions of the OT’s meaning and ethics in her roles at Campbell and at First Presbyterian Church (Durham) where she is a preschool Sunday school teacher and a leader of its not-so-young adults’ group. She is a candidate for ordination, certified ready to receive a call, in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Mary resides with her husband Stephen, son August (5), daughter Emilia (3), and pug Frank in Hillsborough, NC.