Our People

Founder and Executive Director Randall B. Robertson shapes the trajectory of GladdeningLight assisted by a Board of Trustees and a National Council. Mr. Robertson is a multimediaist first drawn to the marriage of faith and art in formal study of the Italian Renaissance while in college abroad in the 1970s. He applied that passion towards his first performance art piece produced with Newbery award-winning author Madeleine L’Engle, entitled The Glorious Impossible, combining the art of Giotto’s famed Scrovegni Chapel frescoes in Padua with musical passages of ancient sacred polyphony, classical, contemporary and secular works alongside Ms. L’Engle’s narrative on the life of Christ. Presentation of The Glorious Impossible with Ms. L’Engle throughout North America led to encouragement from theologians John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg to create Phos Hilaron, a performance art “Christmas pageant for thinking adults” which toured the southeast with Drs. Crossan & Borg in 2008 & 2009. Led by a 32-voice chamber choir from Georgia Tech, complemented by cgi composite video and accompanied live by the world music of Free Planet Radio, Phos Hilaron played to audiences in Atlanta, North Carolina and coastal Georgia. Leading up to the founding of GladdeningLight, Mr. Robertson spent the past two years in graduate study of the spiritual arts in New York City.

GladdeningLight is as much about art and love as it is about light. There are many paths to the godhead, and the power of infinite love leads affirming pilgrims on its way. The human condition beckons ancient rhythms to reawaken one’s appreciation for the dance of light and life. GladdeningLight aspires to be an artful beacon exalting the holy spirit’s expression within the creative call.

Trustee Nestor de Armas culminated a thirty-year business career as managing director of an international financial software company and now spends time serving as a director on for-profit and non-profit boards. In addition to GladdeningLight, Mr. De Armas currently helps Stetson University, Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College and Florida Hospital Foundation’s SHARES in this capacity.

Upon the completion of undergraduate and graduate academic training at MIT and Harvard, Trustee Perry Nies managed organizations, both for-profit and non-profit, his entire career. The Honduras ministry of El Hogar is a particular passion of Mr. Nies, for which he serves as Regional Coordinator for projects in Central Florida, as well as his work for Horizon Communities in Prison. Now retired, Mr. Nies seasonally divides his time between Winter Park, Florida and Southport, Maine with his wife Jane.

Trustee Martha Porter received her Ed.D. from the University of Tennessee and an M.Div. from Emory University. Dr. Porter completed the clinical training program at the Pastoral Psychotherapy Institute in Chicago and is ordained in the United Church of Christ. A practicing relational therapist, Dr. Porter runs a Bed & Breakfast with her husband in Highlands, NC.

National Council member Marcus J. Borg, Hundere Chair of Religion and Culture in the Philosophy Department at Oregon State University until his retirement in 2007, is the author of sixteen books, including Jesus: A New Vision (1987) and the best-seller Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (1994); The God We Never Knew (1997); The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (1999); Reading the Bible Again for the First Time (2001), and The Heart of Christianity (2003), both best-sellers. His newest books are Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary (2006), a New York Times Best-Seller and his first work of fiction, Putting Away Childish Things (2010). Dr. Borg has co-authored three books with John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week (2006), The First Christmas (2007), and The First Paul (2009). (Photo by Cyndy J. Hubbard)

Described by The New York Times as "a leading figure in his generation of Jesus scholars," Dr. Borg has appeared on NBC's Today Show and Dateline, PBS's Newshour, ABC’s Evening News and Prime Time with Peter Jennings, NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and several National Geographic programs. A Fellow of the Jesus Seminar, he has been national chair of the Historical Jesus Section of the Society of Biblical Literature and co-chair of its International New Testament Program Committee, is past president of the Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars and is a regular columnist for beliefnet.org. His work has been translated into ten languages: German, Dutch, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and French. Dr. Borg holds a doctoral degree from Oxford University and has lectured widely overseas (England, Scotland, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Hungary, Israel and South Africa) and in North America, including the Chautauqua and Smithsonian Institutions.

National Council member John Dominic Crossan was born in Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, Ireland. He was educated in Ireland and the United States, received a Doctorate of Divinity from Maynooth College, Ireland, in 1959, and did post-doctoral research at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome from 1959 to 1961 and at the École Biblique in Jerusalem from 1965 to 1967. Dr. Crossan was a member of a thirteenth-century Roman Catholic religious order, the Servites (Ordo Servorum Mariae), from 1950 to 1969 and an ordained priest from 1957 to 1969. He joined DePaul University, Chicago in 1969, remained there until 1995, and is now a Professor Emeritus in its Department of Religious Studies. (Photo by Roxy Jacobs)

Dr. Crossan was co-chair of the Jesus Seminar from 1985 to 1996 as it met to debate the historicity of the life of Jesus in the gospels. In the last forty years he has written twenty-three books on the historical Jesus, earliest Christianity, and the historical Paul. Five of them have been national religious bestsellers. The scholarly core of his work is the trilogy from The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (1991) through The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus (1998), to In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom, co-authored with the archaeologist Jonathan L. Reed (2004). Dr. Crossan’s latest book, God & Empire: Jesus Against Rome Then and Now, was published by HarperSanFrancisco in March, 2007. He also has co-authored three books in a series with theologian Marcus Borg, The Last Week, The First Christmas and The First Paul. His work has been translated into twelve foreign languages, including Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian.

Dr. Crossan lectures to lay and scholarly audiences across the world and has appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, ABC’s PrimeTime, Peter Jennings Reporting, and Nightline, CBS’s Early Show and 48 Hours, NBC’s Dateline, and Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, as well as cable networks A&E, History, Discovery, and the National Geographic Channels.

National Council member Harry H. Pritchett, Jr. currently serves as Pastoral Associate to the Dean of the Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta and was the Eighth Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City, the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, from which he retired in 2001. For sixteen years, he was the Rector of All Saints’ Church, Atlanta, where he is Rector Emeritus. The Very Reverend Pritchett has preached and led conferences, retreats, and consultations for clergy and laity throughout this country and in Europe. He has contributed to many books, primarily in the areas of parish development and theological reflection. Reverend Pritchett is the author of God is a Surprise, a children’s songbook, as well as Morning Run, Sabbatical Reflections on the Church and the City. He has contributed various articles and/or sermons to national journals and periodicals of many denominations, and is the originator of the frequently published “The Story of Phillip.” Reverend Pritchett holds Doctor of Divinity degrees from Centre College in Kentucky and the University of the South at Sewanee, and serves on the Board of Trustees at Virginia Theological Seminary.