Mahle Lecture in Progressive Christian Thought

Discussion at a Mahle Lecture

Just Resilience: How to Stay in the Struggle for the Long Haul

When: Thursday, March 26, 2026, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Where: Klas Center, Kay Fredericks Room, 1537 West Taylor Avenue, Saint Paul, MN  

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About the 2026 lecture

The 2026 Mahle Lecture is presented in partnership with Interfaith Action of Greater Saint Paul and its Project Home initiative.

Just Resilience: How to Stay in the Struggle for the Long Haul will discuss how faith traditions cultivate resilience in the fight to end housing insecurity and homelessness. As affordable housing challenges intensify across the Twin Cities, it will address questions of sustaining hope, preventing burnout, and grounding long-term advocacy in spiritual practice and community. Supported by the Mahle family, the event will also feature an interactive art exhibit created by students from Hamline University's Multi-Faith Alliance scholars program. Every participant will have the chance to leave a message on this piece, which will be installed in Project Home's multifaith room.

Whether you are a student exploring vocation, a community member engaged in housing advocacy, a faith leader, or someone seeking a deeper understanding of the intersection between spirituality and social justice, this lecture offers an opportunity to connect reflection with real-world impact.

In collaboration with Interfaith Action of Greater Saint Paul and its initiative Project Home, this year’s Mahle Lecture marks the beginning of a two-year partnership centered on the theme of Just Resilience.

Interfaith Action of Greater Saint Paul logo

About the 2026 guest lecturers

Sara Liegl

Sara Liegl is director of Project Home at Interfaith Action of Greater Saint Paul, where she has worked since 1998. Since 2001, she has led Project Home, an emergency shelter program serving families experiencing homelessness in Ramsey County. Under her leadership, the program has become a vital community resource, providing safe shelter while advancing long-term pathways to housing stability.

With more than two decades of experience in homelessness prevention and family services, Sara combines direct program leadership with regional advocacy and cross-sector collaboration. She serves as chair of the Ramsey County Federal Emergency Shelter and Food Program Local Advisory Board and contributes to Heading Home Ramsey’s steering committee and family work group.

Sara holds a degree from the School of Social Work at University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh and previously worked in child protection and residential youth services in Wisconsin and Maine. She brings practical expertise, compassion, and a systems-level perspective to conversations on housing, policy, and community partnerships.

 

 

Sara Liegl, Mahle Lecture 2026 guest lecturer

Sara Liegl, director of Project Home and advocate for
ending family homelessness, Interfaith Action 

 

Rachel McIver Morey, Mahle Lecture 2026 guest lecturer

Rev. Rachel McIver Morey, director of community
and interfaith engagement, Interfaith Action of
Greater Saint Paul

Rev. Rachel McIver Morey

Rev. Rachel McIver Morey serves as director of community and interfaith engagement at Interfaith Action of Greater Saint Paul. An ordained United Methodist pastor, she builds partnerships across diverse faith communities to address poverty, homelessness, and systemic inequities in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul region.

Rachel brings decades of leadership in rural, urban, and suburban contexts. She earned her Master of Divinity from Wesley Theological Seminary and was an inaugural fellow of the Collegeville Institute. Her work has included launching a suburban homeless youth shelter, supporting grassroots food access initiatives, and strengthening faith-based advocacy for vulnerable communities.

A co-organizer of the Minnesota Interfaith Open Forum, Rachel is known for her thoughtful preaching, courageous leadership, and relational approach to community organizing. She invites audiences to connect faith with action and to cultivate communities grounded in justice, resilience, and mutual respect.

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.

Read the Journal on Digital Commons
 

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

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