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Dr. Michael T. Cooper earned a PhD in Intercultural Studies with a focus on religious movements and a minor in theology focused on early Christian history from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He serves as a missiologist for East West, where he engages in research and equips practitioners for thoughtful and effective cultural engagement. With more than thirty years of global experience, he has worked with community leaders across Africa, Europe, North America, South America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Cooper's recent scholarship explores the intersection of archaeology, theology, and the historical development of religious communities in the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds. His work examines how inscriptions, architecture, trade networks, and civic space illuminate the lived realities of Late Antique religious movements. Committed to careful historical method and cross-cultural respect, he approaches material culture as a vital conversation partner in understanding how communities articulated devotion, identity, and theological conviction within diverse religious ecosystems. He has written and contributed to more than thirty books and academic articles. He has taught at Torch Trinity Graduate University (Seoul), Mission India Theological Seminary (Nagpur), and Asia Graduate School of Theology Nepal, and serves as affiliate faculty at Kairos University. He has presented lectures at institutions including the London School of Economics, the University of Bordeaux, Loyola University, and Baylor University. He is the author of Gods, Emperors, Philosophers, and a New Movement: Discovering the Movement of God in the Archaeological Record of Asia Minor (Wipf and Stock) and Ephesiology: A Study of the Ephesian Movement (William Carey Publishing), among other books.
""I've visited more than ten places where the Apostle Paul once walked, and I can honestly say I wish I'd had this book in hand during those visits--I would have learned so much more! Yet even more importantly, this book demonstrates that the early Jesus movement was deeply and intelligently engaged with its surrounding culture. By skillfully tracing the language, symbols, and social contexts of the first centuries, Michael Cooper shows how the early church used polemical parallelism to reveal that Jesus is better. Gods, Emperors, Philosophers, and a New Movement masterfully weaves missiology, ecclesiology, and archaeology into an engaging and accessible narrative. Only Michael Cooper could have written this book."" --Wes Watkins (formerly Warrick Farah), Facilitator, Motus Dei Network ""I applaud Michael Cooper for this scholarly robust undertaking. His most transcendent observation is: We still have so much to learn. Cooper demonstrates the truth of this maxim by enlightening the missiology of movements with the empirical evidence of archeology."" --David Garrison, Missionary ""Michael Cooper has provided not just information concerning the historical and archaeological context for the Seven Churches, but he has also given us a template for utilizing the interdisciplinary approach of missiology with archaeology, shall we say, 'archaeological missiology?' We often forget that the gospel advanced to Asia Minor, not on the backs of theologians, but through apostolic missionary bands. The fruit of those labors can be seen in the soil and the recent and rapidly increasing excavations in the major mission field from which ancient Ephesus became a hub. We need to learn from that context; Cooper is showing us how."" --Steven Gilbert, Associate Director, Tandy Institute for Archaeology, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
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