Dottie Burge grew up in the Methodist Church and went through the motions of membership through the years with more or less enthusiasm and commitment. In the last several years a need for community led her to ‘rejoin’ St. Paul’s UMC in Houston. A need for a new and deeper understanding of the faith led her to enroll in Bill Linden’s class in Contemporary Theology at Rice University’s Continuing Education program. That was a life-changing experience. Much time since has been spent in reading and learning from FCT speakers and others who are leading scholars in the field. She was inspired to start an FCT gathering which meets at St. Paul’s dedicated to discussion and sharing ideas, questions, doubts, experiences as participants journey through the process of living. St. Paul’s provides a welcoming place to explore new ideas in a traditional setting.

With bachelors degrees from the University of Texas and the University of Houston, semi-retirement from the field of Interior Design has provided time to also pursue interests in nature, birding, history, archeology and trips to San Antonio to visit grandchildren.

Paul Good

John Green

Cathy Knapp, Secretary/Treasurer, is a native Texan who was raised in the Catholic Church. Her first introduction to Wes Seeliger and the Foundation was in 1997 when Marcus Borg spoke at Christ Church Cathedral. In January of 2000 she volunteered to help Wes in the office, and eventually accepted a position on the Board of Directors. After many years of being affiliated with the “church alumni association”, she was introduced to Covenant Church by Wes, where she is now a member.

William M. Linden holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Theology from Oxford University in England and is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Contemporary Theology in Houston. Mr. Linden has concentrated his efforts in theology in the scholarly quest for the historical Jesus — the human being who walked about Galilee in the first century, a person who showed us what God is like and what a human life full of God is like. His published book on this subject is entitled, “The Historical Jesus for Beginners.” For the past three years, Mr. Linden has been teaching a course on the historical Jesus in the Rice University School of Continuing Studies and in various Christian churches in the Houston area. He is an Associate Member of the Westar Institute in California, which sponsors the Jesus Seminar, the leaders in academic historical Jesus research. Prior to concentrating his work on the historical Jesus, Mr. Linden was a Houston lawyer. He is a retired partner of Vinson & Elkins law firm, where he specialized in federal income tax law.

Clyde Mayo is an industrial psychologist with degrees from Rice Univ., Univ. of Houston, and Trinity University. He is a Methodist who was active in youth programs but who drifted from the church as it seemed to focus more on people’s security and social needs rather than be the voice it was intended to be. His Master’s thesis focused on psychological correlates of religious authoritarianism. Currently he is in private practice as a management consultant but his extra time is spent working on ways to keep theology alive in our culture and ways to reduce its complexity so that persons who have casual relationships with the church can more easily “catch on” to where the spirit is moving us.

Gerald T. O’Keefe, a retired minister who served on the staff of several large churches in Houston, has degrees from Rice University and Union Theological Seminary in New York City. While at Union, Mr. O’Keefe had the privilege of studying under two of the last century’s most prominent theologians, Dr. Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Mr. O’Keefe grew up in New York City, East Tennessee and the Houston area. He and his wife, Barbara, have four children, all married, and they currently enjoy the pleasure of their eight grandchildren.. While serving on the Foundation’s Board of Directors, Mr. O’Keefe has been responsible for the following two programs:

1. The Small Group Gatherings where people can process what they learn in the Foundation’s other programs in small, safe settings, located in various neighborhoods around the city.
2. The Academy for Contemporary Theology which offers several eight to ten week courses on contemporary theology in fall and spring semesters.

Mr. O’Keefe serves as a volunteer chaplain in Houston’s Methodist Hospital, serves Houston’s homeless in a program entitled SEARCH, teaches in his church, and has published a novel entitled A Right To Life, that clearly illustrates the point that a child’s right to life involves far more than a mere right to be born.

Jeremy Rutledge is minister at Covenant Church: an ecumenical, liberal, baptist congregation in Houston’s Museum District. Jeremy holds a B.A. from Baylor University and an M.Div. from the Baptist Theological Seminary in the Richmond (VA) Theological Consortium. He has continued his studies at Wadham College, Oxford, the Vancouver School of Theology, and among Thich Nhat Hanh’s order of engaged Buddhists. Jeremy is currently in his final year of D.Min. work at Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago. He is a member of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science and the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies.

Jeremy’s theological interests include feminism, pragmatism, anti-racist/anti-oppression work, and religious naturalism. He enjoys reading, walking, bicycling, gardening, and learning ukulele chords.

Ruth Seeliger is presently Administrator for the Foundation for Contemporary Theology, which was founded by her late husband, Wes Seeliger, and is a member of two of its weekly study groups. She is a speaker and preacher at various churches in the Houston area. She graduated from Swarthmore College, a Quaker college in Pennsylvania, and retired from M.D. Anderson Cancer Hospital as a Patient Care Coordinator in 1995, after 19 years of service. She was ordained in The Chapel of Prayer in Houston in 1989.

Other activities and experiences have included vocal soloist, psychiatric rehab counselor, teacher and meditation facilitator in Protestant churches and in a Jewish Temple and school, healer as a Reiki Master, NonViolent Communication facilitator, member of the Clean Air Committee, and President of the American Association of University Women.

Her spiritual journey has led her through various denominations of Christianity, Judaism, Spiritualism, Hindu-Christianity, Tibetan Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Science of Mind, and a general seeking after the mystical in all of life. She feels that understanding God as Mystery relieves us from dogma and allows us the freedom to experience It in all Its fullness and goodness with one another and the world.

Bob Tucker, Executive Director, is a native of Minnesota. He has served churches in South Dakota, Minnesota, Texas and Kansas. He was, for twenty-eight years, the Senior Minister of First Congregational Church of Houston. He taught for five years in Turkey, and has taught at the University of Minnesota, Rice University School of Continuing Studies, the Woman’s Institute, and in churches of six denominations. He has also been the Director of Library Services and on the faculty of the Houston Graduate School of Theology. He became the Foundation’s Executive Director in 2001.

James R “Dick” Whanger grew up in West Virginia. He attended the Methodist Church as a youngster and has continued to be active in it today. He graduated from the University of Missouri with degrees in metallurgical engineering and worked in that profession at Hughes Tool Company. In retirement he took up nature photography, specializing in birds.

In the 1960s his interest in religion and theology was deepened by studies of the theologians Bultmann, Tillich, Bonhoeffer, and H. R. Niebuhr. This stimulated an appreciation for contemporary theology that was a life-changing experience. It put a new light on the Christianity he was struggling to stay with at the time. He had rejected the literalism he was hearing, and nothing else was added by the church. So to learn the Bible was using metaphorical stories to tell great truths about the way life was brought a rejuvenation to him because these were experiences in his life. This internal change brought about an external change to get involved in social justice programs to foster the abundant life that Jesus claimed for all. This manifested itself in getting involved in human development projects of the Institute for Cultural Affairs. This involved living and working for short times in in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, the delta country of Mississippi, a coal mining town in West Virginia, and overseas in Kenya and the Philippines. Since this new theological insight had such a change in him, he wanted to make it available to all lay people. Pastors were studying this new theology at seminaries but were not passing it on to congregations. So when he encountered the Foundation for Contemporary Theology, bringing good theology to the public, he supported it because he believed our personal theology controlled our life stance and controls the decisions we make in political, economic, and ethical issues that will lead to human misery or blessedness in the century before us. Theology matters!