Mahle Lecture in Progressive Christian Thought
About the 2026 lecture
Hamline University’s Mahle Lecture 2026 invites the community into a timely and urgent conversation about faith, justice, and the work of building a better future.
Just Resilience: How to Stay in the Struggle for the Long Haul explores how diverse faith traditions cultivate resilience in the face of persistent housing insecurity and homelessness. As affordable housing challenges intensify across the Twin Cities, people of faith and conscience continue to ask: How do we sustain hope? How do we avoid burnout? And how do we root long-term advocacy in spiritual practice and community?
Through keynote reflections, shared learning, and dialogue, this event will highlight how faith communities respond to housing injustice—not only with service, but with sustained moral imagination, organizing, and solidarity. Participants will gain insight into the spiritual resources that nourish endurance, the partnerships that amplify impact, and the practices that help communities remain engaged even when change is slow.
Whether you are a student exploring vocation, a community member engaged in housing advocacy, a faith leader, or someone seeking deeper understanding of the intersection between spirituality and social justice, this lecture offers an opportunity to connect reflection with real-world impact.
About the 2026 guest lecturers
About the Mahle Lectures in Progressive Christian Thought
The Stephen and Kathi Austin Mahle Endowed Fund for Progressive Christian Thought was created to support the efforts of Hamline University toward exploring and articulating contemporary forms of Christian theology and providing students opportunities to learn its relevance to personal, social, political, and economic life.
Through the Mahle Lecture series we explore and articulate contemporary forms of Christian Theology through the lens of Lived Theology. During our annual lecture series, we explore and articulate the thought and spiritual biographies of invited activists, scholars, and community and faith leaders who are actively working to transform society based, at least in part, on their spiritual and religious convictions. The fruit of each lecture series is an articulation of spiritual visions aimed at inspiring moral imagination and civil courage as we face stark inequalities and work together to take the lead in building a more just world.
The Mahle Lectures Journal
The Mahle Lectures Journal is an archival publication of Hamline University's annual Mahle Lecture established in 2009 by the Stephen and Kathi Austin Mahle Endowed Fund on Progressive Christian Thought. Each issue will include a introduction to the theme, and central content from the annual events will be published here in order to provide the Hamline community, and beyond theological resources and opportunities to reflect on the place of faith and spirituality in personal, social, political, and economic life.
Past Mahle Lectures
| 2025 | "Scriptural Reasoning and Indigenous Wisdom," Rocío Cortés Rodríguez PhD |
| 2024 | "The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning," Dr. David Ford |
| 2023 | "Teaching Religion and Race in Predominantly White Institutions," Dr. David Evans, Dr. Tobin Miller Shearer |
| 2023 | "Artistic Expression as Mobilization Workshop," Joe Davis |
| 2023 | "Introduction to Health, Wellness, and Healing from Trauma Workshop," The Irreducible Grace Foundation |
| 2022 | "Let's Not Go Back to Normal: Racial Reckoning, Repair, and Reconciliation," Rev. Nekima Levy Armstrong, Joe Davis, Dr. Alton B. Pollard, III, Amanzi Arnett, Dr. Iva B. Carruthers, and Rev. Dr. Curtiss Paul DeYoung |
| 2021 | "Who are We? Christian Nationalism, White Supremacy, and Pathways to Liberation," The Very Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, The Rev. Adam Lawrence Dryer, Robert P. Jones, and Katherine Stewart |
| 2020 | "Imago Dei in an Age of Selfies, Separations and Schisms," Bishop Karen P. Oliveto |
| 2018 | "Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology," Dr. Carol P. Christ and Dr. Judith Plaskow |
| 2018 | "Hearing Earth in our Time: Ecowomanism, African American Women, and Earth-Honoring Faiths," Dr. Melanie L. Harris |
| 2017 | “Healing, Wholeness, Holiness: Religious Responses to Trauma and Illness,” Dr. Shelly Rambo |
| 2016 | "Eco-Theology for the Heartland: A Bioregional Approach," Dr. Timothy Eberhart |
| 2015 | "Religious Life, Public Life, and the Adventure of Civility," Krista Tippett |
| 2015 | "Are the Gospels of Mary, Thomas and Truth Scripture? Imagining New Ways of Reading the Bible in the 21st Century," Dr. Hal Traussig |
| 2014 | "Becoming Buddhist When Jesus Isn't Enough: A Third Wave Womanist Negotiation of Race, Gender and Religion," Dr. Monica A. Coleman |
| 2013 | "Occupy Religion?: Reimagining the God of the Multitude," Dr. Joerg Rieger |
| 2012 | "World Balance vs. Personal Salvation in American Indian Postcolonial Perspective," Dr. George 'Tink" Tinker |
| 2011 | "Holy Food & Groceries: How Feeding and Healing Transforms Lives," Sara Miles |
| 2010 | "Finding Beauty in a Broken World," Terry Tempest Williams |
| 2009 | "Saving Paradise: A Life-Affirming Christianity for the 21st Century," Dr. Rita Nakashima Brock |
