Ralph Lee Carnes: Book Review Editor

Ralph Carnes is an Episcopal priest (resident in the Diocese of Chicago), and an APC Board-Certified chaplain (ret). He was one of the early graduates of Emory University’s interdisciplinary Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts (1965), and wrote his dissertation on the epistemology of linguistic relativity. Dr. Carnes taught philosophy at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, the University of South Alabama in Mobile, the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, and Roosevelt University in Chicago, where he was a tenured full professor in the philosophy department and (for the last six years of his academic life) Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

In 1977, Dr. Carnes left the security of the academy and founded Words Unlimited, a Chicago-based communications firm. During the following eighteen years, his company produced over 300 book-length training manuals for sales, policies, procedures, computer tutorials and manufacturing processes--as well as forty-three volumes of workbooks for high school counselors. Clients included (for example) Amoco Pipeline, American Business Systems, the Advantage Press, Texas Instruments, Hewlett-Packard, United Airlines and the Association of Professional Chaplains. During that same period, Dr. Carnes and his wife, the Rev. Dr. Valerie B. Carnes, wrote eight nationally published hardcover books on topics ranging from exercise physiology to religious renewal in America. Publishers included Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Simon and Schuster and St. Martins Press.

In 1983, Dr. Carnes and his wife found their way back into the church. By 1987, Ralph was ordained priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, and was Board- Certified as a chaplain by the APC in 1990. He has been a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of the JPCC for almost 19 years, and has done numerous book reviews for the Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling. His wife Valerie was ordained Priest in 1996, and was Board- Certified by the APC in 1998. 

Since “retiring” to Chattanooga in 1995, Dr. Carnes has served as President of the Chattanooga Association for Clinical Pastoral Care, was a member of the Bioethics Committee for the Moccasin Bend State Mental Health facility, and has been a speaker and workshop facilitator for several local bioethics conferences.  He is also active as a Priest Associate at St. Peter’s Episcopal  Church in Chattanooga, where his wife, who is Director of Pastoral Care at Alexian Village of Tennessee, is also a Priest Associate. Dr. Carnes is presently working on two books of his own:(The Chaplain’s Journal and a novel, Childewood’s Generations). In his spare time, he plays Flamenco guitar, and drives a 26-year-old BMW R100RT sidecar rig.

Ralph and Valerie Carnes live in Chattanooga, Tennessee.