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flaming_dk@mercer.edu

Darlene K. Flaming

A native of Tulsa Oklahoma, I began my post-secondary education at Oklahoma Baptist University, intent on majoring in religion so that I could be a missionary. This career path was influenced by a limited understanding of how God could use women. Through the influence of a woman religion professor and work at a statewide Baptist camp, I discovered wider options open to women in God's service. I found that my gifts were in the areas of academics and teaching. I graduated from OBU with a Bachelor of Humanities degree with emphases in Religion, History, and Psychology.

After college, I served as a Journeyman through the Southern Baptist Convention’s Foreign Mission Board. Living in French Guiana for two years, I taught a single high school missionary kid, shepherded an English-speaking congregation, and directed a Bible correspondence course. On my return to the states, I went to The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, for the Master of Divinity degree. While at Southern, I received other ministry experience, serving as a hospital chaplain and as an associate pastor of an inner-city church.

After seminary, I earned the Ph.D. in the History of Christianity from the University of Notre Dame. I focused on the periods of the Early Church and the Reformation. My dissertation is on John Calvin's uses of the Apostolic Church. I am fascinated by the ways in which we read church history through the lenses of our contemporary situations.

I began teaching in the Christianity Department at Mercer University in the Fall of 1998. I regularly teach the Old and New Testament Introduction courses, the History of Christianity, and the First Year Seminar. I have also taught a Women and Christianity course, The Baptist Tradition, Senior Capstone on the Holocaust and Genocide, and Gendered Lives.

My husband, David Felton, shares in this academic life at Mercer as much as he can and I share in his ministry as a Presbyterian pastor in a small church in Southeast Georgia. We also enjoy travelling and gardening together.