NYTS Announces Two New Faculty Appointments

New York Theological Seminary is pleased to announce two new faculty appointments.

Dr. Efraín Agosto, former Academic Dean, Professor of New Testament and Director of the Programa de Ministerios Hispanos at Hartford Seminary, joins the NYTS faculty as Professor of New Testament.  No stranger to New York, Dr. Agosto was born and raised in the city to parents who were originally from Puerto Rico.  He graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. before moving to Boston to complete his M.Div. at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and his Ph. D. at Boston University.  He served as Director of the Center for Urban Ministerial Education in Boston, a campus of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary prior to his appointment at Hartford Seminary.  Dr. Agosto has served in pastoral ministry in Pentecostal, Baptist and Congregational churches in New York, Boston, and East Hartford, Connecticut.  In 2000, he completed a one-year term on an interim pastoral team at the Iglesia Cristiana Nueva Esperanza (United Church of Christ) in East Hartford, Connecticut and continues to be sought after as a preacher and pastoral teacher.

Dr. Agosto’s scholarship focuses primarily on the Pauline Epistles, with a special interest in the leadership of Paul and others who were serving in ministry in these communities.  Among his publications are Servant Leadership: Jesus and Paul, which was published by Chalice Press in 2005, and a Spanish-language commentary on I and II Corinthians, Corintios, which was published by AugsburgFortress Press in 2008.  He has served as a Mentor for the Hispanic Theological Initiative, and on the Executive Committee of the Association of Theological Schools.  At NYTS he will teach courses in New Testament at the Masters degree level and in the Spanish language Doctor of Ministry program.

Dr. Moses O. Biney, former Adjunct Faculty member and former Research and Teaching Fellow in the Ecologies of Learning project (now the Center for the Study and Practice of Urban Religion) at NYTS joins the faculty as Assistant Professor of Religion and Society and Research Director for the Center for the Study and Practice of Urban Religion (CSPUR).   Dr. Biney is a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary where he earned both the Th. M. and the Ph. D.  In addition he holds an M. Phil. from the University of Ghana, a Dip. Theol, from Trinity Theological Seminary, and a Dip. Ed. and B. A. from the University of Cape Coast.

From 2005 through 2007 Dr. Biney worked with Lowell Livezey, founding Director of the Ecologies and Learning Project before becoming a member of the Adjunct Faculty at the Seminary.  He has also served on the faculty of the University of Ghana and as an adjunct professor at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.

Ordained as a minister of word and sacrament in 1993, Dr. Biney has served in various ministerial positions including school chaplain, associate pastor, organizing pastor for a Ghanaian immigrant congregation in the Bronx, and the director of overseas mission for the Presbyterian Church of Ghana in the United States.   He is currently serving as a minister at First Presbyterian Church of Irvington in New Jersey, and is on the board of the Presbyterian Camps and Conferences Inc., Johnsonburg, NJ

Dr. Biney’s research and teaching interests include religion, migration and transnationalism; religion and culture; Africa and the African diasporan studies; Christian social Ethics; and congregational studies.  His book, From Africa to America: Religion and Adaptation among Ghanaian Immigrants in New York was published by New York University Press earlier this year.