Dr. Michael Root
Michael Root is Professor of Systematic Theology at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia, SC. He served as Dean from 2003-2009, after having earlier served on the faculty from 1980 to 1988. He is also Visiting Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France, where he served as Research Professor and sometimes Director from 1988 to 1998.He also has taught at Davidson College in Davidson, NC and Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, OH. Since January 2006, he has been Executive Director of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology.
Root is a native of Norfolk, Virginia. After attending public schools in Chesapeake, Virginia, he studied at Dartmouth College (B.A., summa cum laude), and Yale University (Ph.D. in theology). He received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Wittenberg University (Springfield, OH) in 2002 in recognition of his contribution to the unity of the church.
Root is a member of the US and international Lutheran-Catholic dialogues and has served on the US Lutheran-United Methodist dialogue, the Anglican-Lutheran International Working Group, and the Anglican-Lutheran International Commission. He was the Faith and Order Commission Observer for the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission. He served as coopted staff at the 1990, 1997, and 2003 Assemblies of the Lutheran World Federation and the 1993 World Conference on Faith and Order and was a consultant at the 1998 Lambeth Conference. He served on the drafting teams that produced the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification and Called to Common Mission, which established full communion between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church. He is the author (with Gabriel Fackre) of Affirmations and Admonitions (Eerdmans 1998) and editor of Justification by Faith (with Karl Lehmann and William Rusch, Continuum 1997), Baptism and the Unity of the Church (with Risto Saarinen, Eerdmans 1998), and Sharper than a Two-Edged Sword: Preaching, Teaching, and Living the Bible (with James Buckley, Eerdmans, 2008).
Southern Lutheran Seminary They have a Methodist and a Babtist program of studies. True.
