School of

Theology and Missions

C. Ben Mitchell

Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy &
Special Assistant to the President

University Profile | Scholarship Profile

About
Ben Mitchell is the Graves Chair of moral philosophy at Union University. He is also editor of Ethics & Medicine: An International Journal of Bioethics and serves as a Research Fellow with the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC.

Prior to joining the Union faculty, he taught ethics, including bioethics and contemporary culture for a decade at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, where he was also director of the Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity from 2006-2008. He taught at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1997-1999.

He received his doctorate in philosophy with a concentration in medical ethics (with honors) from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. His program included a year-long clinical residency at the University of Tennessee Medical Center at Knoxville, Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, and a summer-long residency at the East Tennessee Mental Health Institute. He also received a Master of Divinity Degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas and a Bachelor of Science degree from Mississippi State University.

Mitchell has done additional study in genetics for non-scientists at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, Cold Spring Harbor, New York and has twice been visiting scholar at Green College, the medical college of Oxford University.

He was a consultant with the Center for Genetics & Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University and Co-Director for Biotechnology Policy and Fellow of the Council for Biotechnology Policy in Washington, D.C. He also served as a Fellow of the Institute for Biotechnology and a Human Future at Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago-Kent School of Law; a Fellow of the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies, Washington, DC; and as a Senior Fellow of the Kairos Journal. He was a member of the Templeton Oxford Summer Symposium on Religion and Science (2003-2005).

In addition to his academic work, Mitchell also consults on matters of public policy and has given testimonies before policymaking groups including the U. S. House of Representatives, the Institutes of Medicine, and the Illinois Senate.  He has published in major news media, including the Washington Post and is interviewed regularly on radio and television, having appeared on National Public Radio, Fox News, MSNBC, and others.

Among other works, he is the author of Ethics and Moral Reasoning (Crossway, 2013) and a co-authored volume, with D. Joy Riley, MD, Christian Bioethics: A Guide for Pastors, Health Care Professionals, and Families (B&H, 2014).

Education:
Ph.D, University of Tennessee
M.Div., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
B.S., Mississippi State University

Office: JEN 303, Box 3019, 731-661-5995
E-mail: bmitchell@uu.edu