Allison L. Gray is Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Theology department at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas. She earned her Ph.D. in 2016 from the University of Chicago, in New Testament and Early Christian Literature. Gray’s work focuses on the intersections of literary production, religious authority, and pedagogy in Late Antiquity. Her first book, Gregory of Nyssa as Biographer: Weaving Lives for Virtuous Readers, is forthcoming with the STAC series at Mohr Siebeck. Her current book project, in development with Paulist Press, explores Pauline kinship metaphors. Although Paul’s figurative language like “soldier of Christ” or “athlete competing for a crown” historically opened spaces for marginalized groups to belong in Christian community, readers in today’s US Christian churches can benefit from reconsidering how our own cultural context shapes our understanding of those metaphors, rendering some problematic and others rich with the potential to create belonging.