Note: From The Locus of the Theological Vocation (Orbis Books, 2026). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.
Context shapes theology. Christians’ professional, linguistic, racial, geographic, political, gendered, sexual and ecological locus informs their faith and their ways of seeking understanding. This is well-trod ground for theologians, but the context of theology today offers less familiar terrain: What happens when the institutional contexts for doing theology decide to close up shop and leave theology behind? In recent history, many theologians have lived their theological vocations in academic settings, but now theologians are increasingly unable to carry out their vocation professionally.
Whither the Theologian?
Dr. Matthew Shadle’s testimony in America magazine named the changes happening in theology in North America today: “We are in the midst of a stage in that evolution in which the role of theologian becomes increasingly distinct from that of university professor.” For many theologians in the United States, particularly for lay theologians, it is higher education that has offered a way to do theology, as a vocation, by working in higher education, the theological professor profession. But that is changing.
Of course, anyone who seeks understanding through faith or in faith is a theologian. Yet this search is bolstered by the presence of a community of trained and practiced scholars who root their own search in the research, teaching, writing, preaching, reading, translating and retrieving of the Church’s millennia of theological conversations and practice. We, the editors and authors of this book, want that practice and that conversation to continue, so we are asking the question: What is the locus of the theological vocation? And where or what is it becoming? American colleges and universities today follow a transactional model of education. Institutions of higher education compete to offer the curricula, the academic programs, that entering students want. In a consumerist context of education, academic programs are available by sale. When employment is uncertain, colleges and universities shape their educational offerings with eyes fixed on market demand. Higher education in such a world prioritizes academic offerings on the basis of guesses about which careers will require college graduates (or, more accurately, on the basis of guesses about which careers prospective students believe will seek college graduates a few years hence). In obedience to these markets and perceptions, universities are shuttering academic programs such as theology and religious studies, along with language and literature, philosophy and other humanist disciplines. Even for institutions with a historic or continuing commitment to specific Christian traditions (such as Catholic universities), the preservation of a locus for theological professionals is not guaranteed. What had been a given is now a legitimate question: Is there a role for theology in Catholic higher education?
Widening the World of Theological Wisdom and Work
Additional forces tighten this squeeze. In spring of 2025, news outlets Al-Jazeera and The Guardian both reported that the collapse of American higher education has begun. Even within North America itself, where the canaries named and the symptoms that alarm may vary, many Americans express significant objections to the direction of higher education in the United States.
At the same time, the Church itself, another likely locus for theological vocations, offers minimal options. Unlike colleagues who are ordained clergy, lay theologians cannot usually turn to a church appointment as a home within which to do theology. This locus is also subject to manipulations of the growing anti-intellectualism of contemporary American populism, including within American Christianities. Theologians evicted from the university find themselves marginalized in their church, not because of dissent over the teachings of the churches they serve, but because they complicate Christian worldviews, disrupting false assurances of many, who, thinking they are obedient to the teachings of their churches, are in fact practicing an ideologically and culturally captive faith.
On the other hand, the loss of academic positions in theology might liberate theologians to identify previously overlooked contexts. After all, the end of academic loci for theology does not mean the end of a need for theology. In fact, the opposite may be true.
There is need for theological work, but the work might not be needed in the way that theologians today often assume. In fact, theological work might be most sorely needed in places where theologians have not been offering it. Therefore, this book brings together over a dozen theologians and writers who are theology-adjacent to take stock and revisit the question of where, when, how (and whether) theology, as a profession, might continue.
Some authors of this book’s chapters see hope and call for a resolve to ensure that the theological vocation maintains its place in academia. Others point to ways in which the Church might offer new places for the vocation to serve. Still others are more than ready to put academia behind us and find or create the loci elsewhere, outside of the ivory tower and beyond the Church.
The authors of this book present different and even conflicting perspectives, but they share significant agreement. They universally caution against viewing theology as “Queen of the Sciences,” a tradition with roots in the discipline but which offers no chance of helping Church, world or higher education today. They all also agree that the need for theological words, wisdom and work persists even as openings to do theology professionally shrink. Many of them agree that the way theology is done, for whom and by whom and where it is done, must change. In fact, for many of these authors, the unraveling of theology in the academy could and should bring a renewed wisdom about the nature of and the need for this work, wherever it is to be done.
We, the three editors of this book, came together on this project from different loci. One of us is a lay Catholic ethics scholar who faced the end of her theological career when her employer (a Jesuit university) shuttered its theology major, along with several other academic programs, terminating many faculty members. One of us is a lay Catholic ethics scholar who has been working to move his department from being a service department to his university’s core curriculum and mission and identity, into entrepreneurial continuing education ventures with the local Catholic church in his home state. And one of us is an ordained Baptist minister and professor of religion and philosophy who is now working as his university’s sole faculty member in religion. He has been endeavoring to build partnerships with church associations to implement training programs for church leaders as well as obtaining grants to support the place of theology and religion at his university. He is keenly aware of the fragile state of this location for theology and religion. Our conversations about our vocation’s locus have not brought us to agreement on any one response. Accordingly, we offer a volume of three parts, each considering a different perspective.
Excerpt from Nancy M. Rourke, Nathaniel Holmes Jr. and Ramon Luzarraga, editors, The Locus of the Theological Vocation, The Annual Publication of the College Theology Society, Volume 71 (Orbis Books, 2026).
Nancy M. Rourke, assistant professor, St. John Fisher University; Nathaniel Holmes Jr., professor of religion and philosophy, Florida Memorial University; and Ramon Luzarraga, associate professor of theology and religious studies, Saint Martin’s University
