Jonathan Tran is a Visiting Professor at the Divinity School and an Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics and George W. Baines Professor of Religion at Baylor University.

What are you most looking forward to about life in Chicago?

As a visiting professor, I’ll be traveling up a couple days each week during the autumn quarter. Sometimes various family will join me since we (my wife and teenage kids) all love Chicago. I very much look forward to Chicago’s Autumn season, especially since Texas doesn’t so much have a fall as much as summer suddenly changes into winter come December. We know a number of people in Chicago, perhaps more so than in any other city other than Waco where we live and Los Angeles where we grew up. I’m also thrilled to be in a city with a thriving Chinatown, and really so much diversity and kinds of diversity. Finally, the Second City has such great history, culture, architecture, etc. that I’m thrilled to regularly be in a place I mostly get to visit on work trips.

What are you most looking forward to about joining us at the Divinity School?

The Divinity School has world-class scholars I’ve admired from a distance for years. It regularly produces the best graduate students in America. And its intellectual culture is second to none. All of that I count as privilege to be around, even in a visiting capacity. And of course there is the broader university and being part of that is very exciting. The new Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity is particularly intriguing to me, so I’ll see what I can do to engage those conversations while visiting this Fall.

How did you come to do the work you do?  What do you like about it?

I’ve worked in linguistic philosophy or “ordinary language philosophy” for years and focus my research on the theological implications of the human life in language. I think a lot about how language works, how it’s evolved, how it holds (or doesn’t) communities together, and so on. One can imagine the implications for any number of research questions, including for Christian theology which holds not simply that language matters, but that it matters ultimately. I started this work in graduate school and have continued it in the decades following. It’s a driving passion, and as I’ve learned, endless.

What are your recent or upcoming publications or projects?  Is there anything new you are working on?

I recently published Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism, which tries to 1. Reframe race and racism in terms of political economy; 2. Do so from the perspective of Asian Americans, those marginalized by antiracism after having first been marginalized by racism; and 3. Foreground the positive role religious communities can play in confronting racial capitalism. That book took a few years to write, and now I get to go around answering for it, which has been quite energizing and enjoyable. Beyond that, I’m finishing a book on Christianity and politics, and for years have been working on a large project related to language and theology. Along with the books and articles along the way, I’m on several different grants, including one on science and theology and another on religious communities engaged in coalitional justice work.

When you’re not studying religion, what are you doing for fun?

Am I never not studying religion?!? Just kidding. I hang out with the family a lot, though we’re losing one to the University of Texas this fall (cue the tears!). We’re a tight family, and spend a lot of time enjoying our four cats and three chickens, and conspiring how to get them to do adorable animal things. I also play a lot of basketball, which simultaneously keeps me young and makes me old. Not sure how that works, but I love it.

Opinions on Chicago-style pizza?

If I lived in Chicago full time, I’d eat a Lou Malnati’s Classic every day and likely not make it through the quarter. Fortunately, I’ll only be up only once a week, hence one pizza a week, which surely my basketball trained-heart can take!