Rodney Petersen has been Executive Director of the Boston Theological Institute since moving to the Boston area from Switzerland in 1990. In addition to this work with the BTI, he teaches in both the member schools and overseas. He teaches in the areas of history and ethics, currently focusing on issues of religion and conflict. Together with BTI colleagues these courses have taken students to various regions of the world in order to understand and film ways in which faith communities are implicated in regional violence and how they can be avenues of reconciliation. He is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., serving on several of their committees and served for seven years as the pastor of the Allston Congregational Church (U.C.C.).

Prior work included teaching at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Deerfield, Illinois), Webster University (Geneva, Switzerland), and with the Fédération des Institutions établies à Genève (FIIG). He also worked with churches in France and Eastern Europe, primarily Romania.

He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, the Massachusetts Commission on Christian Unity, the Lord’s Day Alliance of the USA, the Refugee Immigration Ministry, Sec/tres. American Society of Missiology (Eastern Fellowship), and numerous other academic and ecclesiastical organizations. He is author or editor (and co-editor) and contributor of several articles and scholarly works, including the books, Preaching in the Last Days (Oxford University Press, 1993); Christianity and Civil Society: Theological Education for Public Life (Orbis Books, 1995); Consumption, Population, and Sustainability: Perspectives from Science and Religion (Washington, D. C.: Island Press, 1999), with accompanying video, “Living in Nature.”; The Contentious Triangle: Church, State, and University. A Festschrift in Honor of Professor George H. Williams (Kirksville, MO: Truman University Press, 1999), Earth at Risk (Amherst: Humanity Books, 2000), Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Religion, Public Policy and Conflict Transformation (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2001, 2002), Theological Literacy for the 21st Century (Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002); and Antioch Agenda: Essays in Honor of Orlando E. Costas (ISPCK, 2007).