She also received the CBA Life Impact Award in 1999 and the Gold Medallion Award for fiction. In 1992, Oke received the President’s Award from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association for her compelling contribution to Christian fiction. Since that date, Oke has written more that 75 other novels. The first novel she wrote, Love Comes Softly, was published by Bethany House in 1979.

Furthermore, one of her daughters has helped her to write some of her books. Oke and her husband have 4 children, including two twin brothers. Oke and the two were married in 1957 and have churches in Calgary, Indiana, and Edmonton in Canada.

In college, she met her future husband Edward. Oke graduated from Mountain View Bible College in Didsbury, Alberta. Oke was born as Janette Steeves in Champion, Alberta, to a Canadian prairie farmer and his wife during the Great Depression. She is a devoted Evangelical Christian and therefore, many of her novels are influenced with Christianity and religion. Many of her novels are set in a pioneer era and focus on female protagonists. Her interdisciplinary interests and ecclesial commitments have shaped her preaching, teaching, and scholarship, giving her a practical focus on church ministry and Christian leadership.Janette Oke is a profilic Canadian writer and pioneer of inspirational fiction that was born on 18 February 1935. She is an ordained minister who pastors at Ekko Church in Orange County, California. She currently serves on the editorial board for Brill’s Biblical Interpretation Series.Īs a church leader and preacher, Ok brings more than 20 years of ministry experience to the classroom. She also served on the SBL Status of Women in the Profession Committee and on the steering committee for the Minoritized Criticism and Biblical Interpretation section. Ok is an active member of the Society of Biblical Literature, cochairing the Asian and Asian American Hermeneutics seminar. Her book, Constructing Ethnic Identity in 1 Peter: Who You Are No Longer (T&T Clark, 2021), examines why and how the author of 1 Peter presents Christian identity as an ethnic identity. Currently, she is coeditor of The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Commentary on the New Testament (IVP Academic) and writing a commentary on 1–3 John (Eerdmans, NICNT). Ok has contributed to A Biblical Study Guide for Equal Pulpits (Cascade, 2022) Minoritized Women Reading Race and Ethnicity: Intersectional Approaches to Constructed Identity and Early Christian Texts (Lexington, 2020) T&T Clark Handbook of Asian American Biblical Hermeneutics (T&T Clark, 2019) and Intersecting Realities: Race, Identity, and Culture in the Spiritual-Moral Life of Young Asian Americans (Cascade, 2018). She challenges students to consider textual and contextual factors at work in the interpretive process and how their interplay can provide new insights for biblical and theological reflection. Her research interests include 1 Peter, 1–3 John, the Catholic Epistles, and the formation of early Christian identity, with an emphasis on Asian American, intersectional, feminist, and sociological approaches to biblical interpretation.Īs a teacher, Ok is passionate about helping students grow in the art of interpreting Scripture and introducing them to a diversity of critical methodologies.

She studied religion and English literature at UCLA and taught English at Compton High School in Los Angeles before earning her MDiv and PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. Prior to coming to Fuller, she served for five years on faculty at Azusa Pacific Seminary in Azusa, California. Ok joined Fuller’s faculty as associate professor of New Testament in 2020.

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