Over the summer, Professor Joerg Rieger was awarded funding from the Vanderbilt Center for Sustainability, Energy and Climate for his contribution and dedication to advancing research in these areas. Please join us in congratulating him!

Professor Joerg Rieger has also joined the board of the newly launched Journal of Contemporary Pasifika Theologies—a peer-reviewed open access journal that provides a unique platform for original theological research ideas through articles and book reviews from and about the Pasifika region. CPT is ecumenical, indigenous, and relationality-focused, rooted in a communities-based ‘whole of life’ vision, and aims to further an integrated and justice-oriented vision for the Pasifika household of God.

Professor Bruce T. Morrill was quoted in the article published by WKRN: Young people are returning to faith, filling Nashville’s pews

Conie Borchardt and Stephanie A. Budwey co-presented “Making Spaces for Stories and Healing Through Song: The Slow Retraining of Our Lizard Brains” at the Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives conference at Ripon College Cuddesdon in the United Kingdom earlier this month. Budwey’s part of the presentation looked at three contemporary artists, Flamy Grant, Jennifer Knapp, and Semler, whose compositions use music and storytelling to process their own religious trauma while also speaking out about the harm the Christian church has caused them and other members of the LGBTQIA2S+ community. These examples show how music helps trauma survivors give language to traumatic experiences that are otherwise unable to be expressed while also helping them to make sense of traumatic experiences, addressing what Kimberly Wagner describes as “narrative fracture.”

Congratulations to Laine Walters Young, who has been selected for the inaugural cohort of Scholars as Storytellers—a joint project of The Christian Century and The Narrative Project!

This program exists to support and equip Christian scholars to translate their research into compelling, accessible narratives for broader public audiences. Through this work, the program seeks to reshape the public story of American Christianity into one that is more life-giving, inclusive, and richly informed.