Wheaton College Home Chemistry at Wheaton College
Allen   |   Arnold   |    Howell   |   Kim   |   Mathisen   |   Nieves   |   Priest  
  

 

Overview

Faculty

Majors
  Sociology
  Anthropology

Courses

Special
Resources

Opportunities

 

    

Professor Kersten Bayt Priest
Assistant Professor of Sociology
On faculty since 2006

Phone: (630) 752-5117
Fax: (630) 752-5294
Email: Kersten.Priest@wheaton.edu
Education


Ph.D. Candidate, Loyola University, Chicago, IL
    Dissertation topic: "New global connections, carework & identities in women's short-term mission trips."

M.S., Sociology, Loyola University, Chicago, IL, 2003

M.A., Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, 1998.
    Titled: "Disharmony in the 11:00 A.M. worship hour: A case study of an abandoned interethnic church
    merger."

B.S., Bible/Education, Columbia International University, SC, 1980

 
Professional and Personal Interests

Kersten Bayt Priest grew up in an immigrant family in the San Francisco bay area and is married to Bob Priest, an anthropologist/missiologist. Living across cultural boundaries in the U.S. and Peru strongly shaped Kersten's conviction that Christianity is necessarily embedded in social context. Thanks to awards and fellowships, she has been able to pursue both anthropology and sociology graduate studies with the invaluable encouragement and support of her family, friends and mentors.

Professor Priest's main research interests are identities and social change as it relates to globalization, race, religion, gender, and the family. Social interaction between pastors/teachers and learners, religious congregants, and people world-wide has been the focus of her fieldwork. She has participated in funded grants such as the McNamara Immigration and Religion in Civil Society Project (Pew) and Trinity International University's Globalization and Short-term Missions Project (Wabash Center/Lilly Endowment). Her music and art background brings an analytical focus that questions how such cultural productions mark group/individual identities and are potentially tools for change.

Professor Priest is involved with international families and is particularly interested in finding ways to empower women to get higher education and acquire the skills and materials to support themselves and their families. She can be found helping friends and their children enroll at college, collecting and distributing items to families, and visiting/interviewing "center women" who endeavor to bridge class/race/culture lines. Kersten enjoys being a guest lecturer in the social sciences for Ph.D. seminary students. Kersten and Bob do collaborative research on various projects related to strengthening and connecting the global Church. Paul, their oldest son, graduated from Geneva College with a sociology major. Shelly is a musician/composer and attends Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida. Dan is a student at Trinity College and David, the youngest, is being trained by his brother Dan to become a great volleyball player.


Courses Taught

Introduction to Sociology
Introduction to Anthropology
Magic, Witchcraft and Power
Women, Development and Globalization
Anthropology for Educators
Cultural Anthropology for Healthcare Professionals
Religion and Culture
Race and Ethnic Relations

Membership in Professional Societies

Association for the Sociology of Religion
Graduate Association for Sociology, Loyola University
Chicago Area Group for the Study of Religious Communities
Association of Christians Teaching Sociology (ACTS)
Network of Christian Anthropologists (Fishnet)

Research

Professor Priest collaborates with anthropologist and husband Bob Priest to research short-term missions in the U.S. and Peru. They spent a summer with their family and a research team in Lima doing participant/observation fieldwork. The project also involved travel in the mountains and jungle to conduct interviews and film various groups doing a wide range of activities including medical missions, English language classes, circus entertainment, evangelism and Bible teaching.

Papers Published and/or Presented
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. "New Immigrant Filipinos Bring Changes to Their Parish." In This Side of Heaven: Race, Ethnicity, and Christian Faith. Edited by Robert Priest and Alvaro Nieves. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. (with Robert Priest). "Divergent Worship Practices in the Sunday Morning Hour: Analysis of an ‘Interracial’ Church Merger Attempt." In This Side of Heaven: Race, Ethnicity, and Christian Faith. Edited by Robert J. Priest and Alvaro Nieves. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. 2005. Book review of: “Encountering Religious Pluralism: The Challenge to Christian Faith and Mission” by Harold Netland (2001) InterVarsity Press. Trinity Journal 27: 160-162.
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. 2005. "Globalization, Congregations and Women who do and ‘tell’ short-term mission trips." Presented at the Graduate Association of Sociology Mini-Conference, Loyola University, Chicago, IL, April 1.
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. 2005. "U.S. Christian Mothers’ 'Care-trips': Social Capital & Identities Within and Without Borders." Presented at the Evangelical Missiological Society, North-central Region, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, IL, April 9.
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. 2004. "Dancing and Decorating the Saints: Filipino-American Worship in a Mainstream Chicago Parish." Presented at the Central States Anthropological Society, Milwaukee, WI, April 17.
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. 2004. "Singing, Sewing, Dancing and Cooking Worship: Filipino/a Feasts for the Saints in Skokie, IL." Presented at the Association for the Sociology of Religion, San Francisco, CA, August 16.
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. 2003. "New Immigrant Catholic Filipinos: Globalization and Multi-Cultural Projects in a Local Mainstream Parish." Presented at the Graduate Association of Sociology Mini-Conference, Loyola University, Chicago, March 21.
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. 2003. "We’re Catholic Filipino: Multiculturalism, Globalization and Negotiated Ethnicity." Presented at the Midwest Sociological Society Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, April 16.
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. 2003. "Emergent Ethnic Filipino Worship: The case of a Multi-racial Parish in Skokie." Presented at The Religion and Immigration in Civil Society Project Symposium, Loyola University, Chicago, IL, June 3.
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. 2002. "Embodied Meanings: Working out the kinks on the qualitative data for the Religion, Immigration and Civil Society project in Chicago." Presented at the 4th Annual Conference on Ethnography, Chicago, IL, February 2002.
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. 2002. "Does nonverbal communication matter?: A preliminary analysis of emotion expressions as ‘Markers of meaning' indicative of diverse immigrant religious community experiences." Presented at a meeting for the Regional American Academy of Religion, Chicago, IL, April.
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. 2002. "Rethinking the Census ‘Boxes’: Chicago’s new Religious Immigrants and the Construction of Racial/Ethnic Marginality." Presented at the Annual American Sociological Association Meeting, Chicago, IL, August 2002.
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. 2001. "Divergent Worship Practices in the Sunday Morning Hour: Analysis of an 'Interracial' Church Merger Attempt." Presented at the Chicago Area Group for the Study of Religious Communities, Loyola University, November 3.
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. 1998. "Desegregating the 11:00 Sunday Morning Hour: A Case Study of an Attempt to Merge Religious/Ethnic Identities." Presented at the 97th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Philadelphia, PA, December 2-6.
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. 1998. "Divergent Spiritual Aesthetics in an Attempted Integration of the Sunday Morning Hour." Presented at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the South Carolina Academy of Religion, February 21.
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. 1997. "Cultural Differences in the Teaching and Performance of Music." Presented at the Anthropology Department Colloquium, University of South Carolina, Columbia, February 27.
  • Priest, Kersten Bayt. 1997. "An Attempted Integrative Church Merger Examined." Presented at the Graduate Student Awards Day, University of South Carolina, Columbia, April 2.

Faculty continued: Dr. Brian Howell