I share here three tales that shape and express how I have come to make sense of a telos of theological education that forms, informs, and transforms the people of God into faithful embodiments of the peace, grace, and joy of the Gospel. The first is the story of how my parents influenced my own trajectory into theological education. The second describes my work as dean of a grassroots theological learning community seeking the peace and flourishing of the city. And the third story shares lessons learned from my research on racial/ethnic minority women leaders in global theological education. Together, these three experiences have helped me discover a theological education that is responsive, relevant, and practice-based for all of life.

Aleshire, Daniel. 2008. Earthen Vessels: Hopeful Reflections on the Work and Future of Theological Schools. Grand Rapids. MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Berger, Peter L. 1979. The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press.

Brock, Nakashima Rita et al. 1999. “Developing Teaching Materials and Instructional Strategies for Teaching Asian and Asian American/ Canadian Women’s Theologies in North America.” Boston, MA: The Women’s Theological Center. Retrieved from http://www.panaawtm.org/images/final.report.doc

The University of British Columbia, since 2016, has been working on the creation of the Database of Religious History, a crowd-sourced, interactive, dynamic, and searchable encyclopedia. The digital humanities project is premised on the Big Data approach—a comparative methodology popular among historians, linguists, and anthropologists, but as of yet, less prevalent with scholars of religion.

DRH director, Edward Slingerland, talks to RSN about the project’s theoretical groundings, obstacles to success, and the promise of data collection and the comparative approach to discovering some of the biggest questions in the development of religious practice across history and geography.