Dr. Mark Watney

Dr. Mark Watney

Visiting Lecturer in Theology and Literature

Mark was born and raised in South Africa and immigrated to the United States as a high school senior in 1977. As a college student he crisscrossed his new country 4 times by bicycle, motorbike, and Greyhound bus. He has also taught English in Japan and downtown Los Angeles for 8 years, done ethnographic research in India, and travelled with an evangelistic troupe across Puerto Rico. He and his wife, Laurel, spent their first 18 months with a church-planting team in Turkey, but have lived their last 19 years in the middle of Kansas—teaching college and raising three sons.

Mark is now professor emeritus at Sterling College, assisting in its newly established C. S. Lewis Center. He has given papers at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies, Dordt College, Lee University, and The Southwest Conference for Christianity and Literature. His essays and poetry have appeared in Philosophy Now, The Anglican Theological Review, The Other Journal, and elsewhere, and is the 2017 recipient of the Jacques Maritain Award for Non-Fiction.

Education

• Ph.D. in Humanities (Literary Studies), University of Texas at Dallas (2006)
• M.A. in English, California State University, Pomona (2000)
• Missiology/Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary (1985–1990)
• B.A. in Sociology, Azusa Pacific University (1983)

Theological Interests

Mark is currently tinkering on a literary rendition of the Hebrew Psalter in Old English and trying to update his dissertation on C. S. Lewis’ experience with Sehnsucht in his pre-Christian writings. He also gives weekly Bible studies to the men at Rice County Jail.

• C. S. Lewis and the Inklings
• Theology and Literature
• Philosophical and Theological Hermeneutics
• Poetry