Jacob Cook PhD

Jacob Alan Cook is Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics and the director for Eastern Mennonite Seminary’s “Pathways for Tomorrow” grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc. He earned his PhD in Christian Ethics from Fuller Theological Seminary, where he studied with the great Baptist peacemaker, Glen Harold Stassen, and served as the associate director of the Just Peacemaking Initiative. Jake is the author of Worldview Theory, Whiteness, and the Future of Evangelical Faith, is out now along with a series of articles introducing its main arguments. He has also published, presented, and taught around topics like a theology of identity, theories of (non)violence, formation for peacemaking, and adaptive leadership, and he is currently writing a practical theology of freedom and agency that builds constructively from the radical, little-b baptist tradition. Jake comes to Eastern Mennonite Seminary from Wake Forest University School of Divinity, where he led research on moral formation under one of Lilly’s Thriving Congregations grants as a postdoctoral fellow. He is married to Abigail, who serves as the admissions counselor at Eastern Mennonite School, and they have three children.

“‘Everyone Who Acts Responsibly Becomes Guilty’: Reading Bonhoeffer’s Free Responsible Action, Relative Sinlessness, and Participation in Conspiracy through the Lens of Moral Injury,” Bonhoeffer: Theology and Social Analysis Unit and Martin Luther and Global Lutheran Traditions Unit, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, San Diego, California, November 2024.

“Is Wokeness a New Religion? How Evangelical Worldview Theory Activates Fundamentalism against Critical Theories and Enables Misdirection about Religious Freedom,” Comparative Approaches to Religion and Violence Unit, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, San Diego, California, November 2024.

“Living the Sermon on the Mount in the Shadows of the Empire: Comparing Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s and Eberhard Arnold’s Community Formation Models,” National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion Annual Meeting, Raleigh, North Carolina, May 2024.

“An Intentional Counter-Witness to Reactionary Authoritarianism,” Global Mennonite Peacebuilding Conference and Festival, Harrisonburg, Virginia, June 2023.

“Connecting the Dots: Religious Liberty, the Common Good, and White Evangelical Activism against CRT in Public Schools,” National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion Annual Meeting, Boiling Springs, North Carolina, May 2023.

“The W(h)it(e)ness of Worldview Theory: On the Troubled Genealogy of a Favorite Framework,” Philosophy Speaker Series, Department of Philosophy, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, March 2023.

“Between Don Quixote and Walter Mitty: Ideal Visions, Practical Problems, and Film in Moral Formation,” International Conference on Religion and Film, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands, June 2022.

“Where It All (Re)Starts: The Image of God, Created Sociality, and the Basis of ‘Our’ Freedom,” National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion Annual Meeting, Nashville, Tennessee, May 2022.

“A Free, Responsible Approach to Actively Identifying (with) Jesus in Interreligious and Other Complex Contexts,” Bonhoeffer: Theology and Social Analysis Unit and Christian Spirituality Unit, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, San Antonio, Texas, November 2021.

“Reconceiving the Hopes for and Hindrances to the Conversion of a Plural Self,” Religious Conversions Unit, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, San Antonio, Texas, November 2021.

Christian Ethics

Theologies of Nonviolence, Justice, and Peace