Living Theology
For many, theology brings to mind dusty bookshelves, abstract arguments, and rigid dogmas. But what if theology wasn’t static? What if it could move, breathe, and shape the way we live, love, and lead in the world?
In this episode, Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen are joined by Dr. Lauren D. Sawyer to talk about living theology—a way of engaging God and Scripture that doesn’t stay confined to the context of books, a classroom, or even church, but instead has “feet” that walk into our everyday lives. Lauren shares about The Seattle School’s new Certificate in Living Theology, a one-year online program designed to bring theology into conversation with psychology, culture, story, and community.
Together, they explore why theology is never neutral, how our contexts shape what we believe, and why listening and dialogue are as essential as doctrine. You’ll hear how living theology is less about arriving at final answers and more about cultivating a faith that is reflective, embodied, and responsive to the complexities of our time.
If you’ve ever longed for a way of doing theology that feels deeply connected to life, justice, and relational depth, this conversation is an invitation to consider what it means for theology to truly come alive.
About the Certificate in Living Theology:
The Certificate in Living Theology, hosted by The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology, is a fully online, one-year program that explores how theology is formed, challenged, and renewed in conversation with culture, history, and lived experience.
In this program, you’ll engage in live online classes that invite rigorous and reflective dialogue, and you’ll join Listening Labs that cultivate presence, discernment, and deeper connection. With the guidance of experienced mentors, you’ll learn to integrate theological insight with psychological awareness and relational depth—shaping a faith that can engage the complexities of our time.
Discover how theology and story can come alive together. Learn more at https://theseattleschool.edu/programs/living-theology-certificate/
Episode Transcript
Dan: Rachael, sometimes we need to give sort of a trigger warning to a particular episode. This seems like one we need to offer. We’re going to be talking about theology. Don’t turn us off. Oh, no. What? You guys are so practical and helpful.
Rachael: Oh, yes. I’m sure. That’s how people, when they listen to the Allender Center podcast come because we’re so practical.
Dan: Are you mocking me now?
Rachael: I’m mocking us.
Dan: Okay, good, good. Well, we’re going to be talking about theology and we have one of our dear colleagues, Dr. Lauren Sawyer. Hi Lauren. I’m going to introduce you in a moment, but you’ve been on before. It’s just so good to see you and have you with us. Dr. Sawyer has her doctorate from Drew in a complex realm of theology and ethics has written a brilliant new book, we’ll talk about that in a moment, but also is involved in a new program at The Seattle School. I’m going to let you talk about that, but let me just say that in addition to everything else you do, including swimming often in the frigid waters of Puget Sound, tending to one of the most glorious young boys that we know–you’re also the manager of curriculum and instruction at the Allender Center. Lauren, first and foremost, do you have a life?
Lauren: That is my life, Dan.
Dan: It’s a complex world that you manage, and we’re going to be talking about a new program that you have been part of creating with a number of other faculty. But before we go jumping into that, just to say how are you and what do you bring as you think about theology?
Lauren: Thank you. I was struck by that… you’re like, what is your life or what is this? I was thinking recently about what are my hobbies? I’m like, I don’t know if I have hobbies. I think this is it. It’s reading, it’s writing, thinking deeply. It’s connecting with people. If we can call that a hobby, let’s call it a hobby.
Rachael: Of course. Yeah.
Dan: Wait a minute, what about, wait a minute. I brought up swimming in Puget Sound.
Lauren: Sure, sure, Sure, sure. But I mean to call that a hobby in some ways that feels like a spiritual practice. It feels like a practice in exercise or moving my body. But to call that a hobby doesn’t feel quite right either.
Dan: Well, it’s a fair entry into really a question you brought up Rachael when we were chatting before. So I’ll just turn it over to you.
Rachael: Okay, yeah. Well, part of what we’re engaging today is a new certificate at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology called a Certificate in Living Theology. And I actually really love that language of a living theology, partly because Dan, you, it’s part of why you’re bringing a content warning because for many people, if they haven’t had the opportunity or maybe even if they have had the opportunity to study theology, we almost have this image of big tomes hidden in a library. It’s very intellectual, it, it’s argumentative. It’s coming up with the right theological assumption or assertion and very confrontational. And because it’s The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, there’s a different invitation. And not only are you on faculty at the school, you’re a graduate of the school and have also gone and been a part of another institution and done some deep study. And I actually think you are someone who embodies really well, what we mean when we’re talking about living theology. And in some ways, I think the realm of ethics certainly implies that if theology can’t get up and walk around and mean something in the real and the practical, it’s kind of a waste of our time. So in some ways, I kind of want to hear more from you. How did you come to find yourself a student of theology in the first place, and how would you articulate what living theology means?
Lauren: I love that. Yeah. I sort of feel thrown back into being a senior in college and thinking about this question of what next? And I was a journalism and creative writing double major, and had spent three and a half years thinking that I wanted to work for a magazine, eventually start my own magazine. And as I had more opportunities to write for publications, I very quickly lost passion for it. I don’t know, I lost, it didn’t spark joy in the same way. And so the question I started asking myself was like, what do I want to write about? What am I writing for? Who am I writing for? And I had long heard of The Seattle School, had always told myself if I were going to go to grad school, it would be this grad school. And it met me again at this very particular moment of needing something to write about that felt, that felt deep. I don’t know, authentic? Felt like I was asking big, important questions, not just reflecting on my own experience or my limited life experience at 22. And the studying theology really rocked my world in so many ways. I sort of had a vision for how I was going to do this grad school thing, and it really shook me up in incredible ways. And I think it is this, I don’t know if we would’ve used that term when I was starting my program at The Seattle School, but this idea of living theology, that theology isn’t something that stays in books, that stays in the books on the bookshelf or is something that only happens in a church context, but it does have feet. It goes out into the world. And I remember some of these early conversations having with my theology peers and theology faculty about the connection between theory and praxis and that theology, the kind of theology that compels me and a lot of my colleagues at The Seattle School is a theology that impacts how we live in the world and how we live in the world that impacts our theology. And there’s this sort of cyclical nature of that. And then to be able to teach it has been kind of this whole other piece after having done an advanced degree in ethics and meant to come back and think about those, that theory and praxis integration in a different way.
Dan: Well, the word living seems to, even if it’s not accurate, it’s almost implying there are other forms of theology that might be called something other than living.
Lauren: I hear you.
Dan: So one of the things that you’ve underscored, we’ve attempted to do often is that you need to know context. Theology, let alone our own story, is not static and it lives in a context and therefore has an evolving understanding. I think for many people, theology, when you talk about it being in a tome that’s spelled T-O-M-E, but also can be viewed as T-O-M-B and that deadness, it’s already done. It’s already been done. Calvin did it. You just know what Calvin said or what Augustine said, or more recent theologians. And the notion that it’s a finished and therefore static reality that you simply need to know to know what’s true in many ways is what I hear you engaging with the word living.
Lauren: That reminds me of a question that I often get from people who have studied theology before is what is the theology of The Seattle School or what kind of theology are you doing? Which is a loaded question to begin with, but with, I think getting back to this idea of living theology or contextual theology, theology that happens in a context as all theology happens in a context, the language we use is constructive theology, and that has its own sort of history. And when I talk about constructive theology or I teach constructive theology to my students, I like to talk about it as like, okay, we’re maybe talking about capital C, capital T, constructive theology with its own history and primary thinkers, so on and so forth. But lowercase c, lowercase t constructive theology is what we all do. We are constructing theologies that are coming out of our experience as people of faith in the US, in the year 2025, in our families, in our racial, gender, sexuality, like our makeups. We are constructing theology out of that. And that doesn’t mean that there aren’t core beliefs that we hold as guides, right? This isn’t anything goes, throw spaghetti up the wall sort of theology. We hold to the creeds, we hold to the work of Jesus in the world–past, present, future, but we aren’t necessarily holding to the same kind of dogmas or have the structure of a systematic theology, which is the typical way that academic theology is taught, that there’s a system, there’s a linearity to theology that you need to follow in this way in order to get it right, so to speak. And that’s where, for me, that’s where theology sort of stays on the bookshelf and doesn’t actually enter into the world. So when we do theology at The Seattle School, we think very interdisciplinary. We believe that psychology and other disciplines like ecology and biology and history, influence in really positive ways how we think about theology and the work of God in the world and the work of humans in relationship to God in the world. It’s contextual. It respects and honors the traditions that we come from but aren’t beholden to it in the same way, thinking back to who I was when I started at The Seattle School, there were a lot of things I was ready to leave behind about the faith of my childhood and some of the not spiritual abuse, but spiritual harm that I experienced in my church context. I was ready to let some of that go, maybe didn’t even have the words to describe my experience, but I was able to still find footing to construct something that was meaningful for me that felt still in line with some of these core beliefs about who Jesus is.
Dan: I would love to give me an example, whether it’s about ecclesiology or christology or soteriology things that would be the typical kinds of categories for talking about systematic theology. But when you say living, that means there is something substantial about theology because we’re reflecting on what scriptures teach about God, but in that there is a lens that we cannot help but look through. None of us look through completely and accurately at any text, let alone our own life. So how we see is built on context, both explicit and implicit regarding memory or regarding any other portion of our lives. So I would love for you to walk us through how certain dogmas, doctrines, or understandings have shifted and changed and deepened so that there is a more living theology in you.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah. I am thinking about my students in particular and some of the movements that I’ve seen them make in our Christology course and some of the other classes I teach that are centered on either the person of Jesus or the cross and particularly the moment of the cross. And I think about, and I would love Rachael to pop in if she, because I know this is her passion project as well, but I think that there’s been something that really opens up for students, and this was true for me when I was a student in even just understanding or recognizing that atonement theologies one, that that’s plural and that our theologies of atonement were created, formed in a context. I think the one that kind of blows people’s minds is anselm’s satisfaction/ atonement theory, which is the basis for a lot of our Protestants, evangelical atonement theories of penal substitution and there’s sort of this longer legacy looking back all the way to Anselm and then to understand that that atonement theory came out of this medieval futile system. And understanding Anselm in his context actually helps you understand why this was a compelling atonement theory and maybe why it’s not so compelling anymore for some people. And where there’s some room for maybe negotiation, where maybe your experience in church, which was certainly true for me, was that this is the one atonement theory. You need to believe that God is mad at you and sent his son to die and your sins were the ones that put him on the cross, and you should feel guilty about that. But then to introduce my students to other atonement theories, some that are really ancient, I love talking to my students about Irineous ‘s theological imagination, which is a very, very different understanding of atonement or some more recent ones, feminist womanist views of atonement that are much more centered in the life and ministry of Jesus versus his death and even resurrection from the cross.
Dan: Well, if it’s living and not static, then it’s disruptive. It’s going to, in some sense, upset certain predictive controllable categories that have been viewed as so true that even questioning almost creates then the question of, well, then you’ve lost your faith, you’ve lost your belief. And in some sense, I’ll just say, because I think I know you well, you are a woman of deep faith, deep passionate relationship with Jesus. And yet in that the disruption of looking at theology as contextual rather than final. As in some sense leaning in toward the long labor every one of us must make to shape and form an understanding of theology that reflects our own sense of place, person, passion. Again, as you put it, it’s not just throwing spaghetti against the wall, but it’s allowing the text, which isn’t theology to become a form or frame that allows us to think textually, but in certain theological or thematic categories. Tell me if I’m in the ballpark of what you’re doing.
Lauren: Yeah.
Rachael: Well, and I think what I would add as a nuance here, what you’re saying, Lauren, it just…
Lauren: Thanks Rachael.
Rachael: part of studying theology in a way that invites you to take seriously the past, present, and future, and to look at context is to acknowledge theology is not neutral. How we make meaning of God and the story of God and what it means to be people of God is never neutral. And there are theological systems playing out in our current context today that have been very detrimental and death-dealing that are coming out of ways scripture is being interpreted, relationship with God is being understood, something that we’ve talked about Christian nationalism on the podcast before. That’s a certain kind of theological frame. And so an invitation to grow critical thinking skills around how our theologies come to be constructed and how they live out. It is an invitation to wrestle with the story of God and the implications of that story. So for example, for me, when I came to The Seattle School as a bright, young, hope-filled MDiv student, I loved my time. This was the exact kind of theological work I wanted to be doing that was deeply relational, had this element of theology and psychology getting to be in conversation, right? Because psychology is a certain kind of frame that helps us make sense of the impact of how we make meaning, of the impact of how we perceive God, how we perceive ourselves, how we relate to the world around us. And so I did my whole, it’s called an integrator project, but really it’s kind of like a graduate thesis on this intersection of atonement and domestic violence because I was at The Seattle School and they were like, talk about something relevant to your life and your deep vocational hopes and your biggest theological questions. And so for me, I was coming to this theological question really from the implications of discipleship and how we think about what it means to take up our cross and follow Jesus because I had been in a context that had really distorted what love was. And so I was really asking how do we make sense of God’s work on the cross right atonement when there’s lots of suffering in the world that if we don’t think critically about how we talk about this could set people up for more harm or could glorify abusers or could the list went on and on and on. And I think in some ways there’s something of the invitation in this certificate to get to step into some theological courses at The Seattle School in relationship with others where no one’s coming… I love how you said that Dan, none of us are coming with an objective way of reading and making sense and there’s something really powerful about doing this in community. It’s really how we’re meant to be doing it, that we co-construct something together in conversation with those who have come before us with an imagination as to what this means and how then shall we live. And so what does it mean to think about how we construct theology? That’s one of the classes. What does it mean this Christology, the study of Christ, how does how we historically and abstractly and in an embodied way and in a relational way make sense of Jesus? How is that relevant? How does it play out? What does it mean to live faithfully? And what is our mission from God? These are all really beautiful courses that I think if you’re someone who’s like, I love reading theology books, I love thinking critically about these things. I’m disturbed by what I’m seeing in our world today, and I want a safe place to be able to ask hard questions, not only of the church or our historical or American Christianity or even myself to get to do that in a context that’s providing the framework in order for you to do that. And I think what’s important is in an interdisciplinary way where theology is in conversation with other ologies, anthropology and sociology and psychology, because that’s part of what makes it living. And that’s ultimately, I think, good theological work that’s inherent in it. If theology is looking at the text to make sense of who God is, then inherently you’re dealing with all of those ologies because you’re dealing with the people in a time and place and events and God revealing God’s self. And so, I mean, I almost switched to the counseling program during my time at The Seattle School, and because of how you just heard me talk, one of my very wise professors was like, not everyone gets as excited about theology as you clearly are. And so I’m biased. I actually think this work is vital and enthralling and just really important. But Lauren, I’m thinking about you and I would love for you to share with our listeners a little bit more because there’s actually a really core intersection for you around living theology in a book that you have coming out this fall that you can currently pre-order called Growing Up Pure: White Girls, Queer Teens, and the Racial Foundations of Purity Culture, which is, I know in some ways a compilation of so much of your doctoral work. And when you were talking about, I’m thinking about Dan’s question around some of the ways in which your theological work was both exposing and transforming and shifting how you understood your place in the story of God. This feels like very core, a very core intersection that came into fruition. That’s a part of how theology gets lived out in ways that are both beautiful and sometimes broken. And that’s just a part of our lot in being human.
Lauren: Yeah. Thank you, Rachael. Yeah, it’s interesting to think about. So my book is coming out in early December, and yes, culmination of my doctoral work, but also a culmination in a lot of ways of my higher education college through my time at The Seattle School. I am somebody who I think you has a lot of questions, has a lot of desire to call out and name harm in systems and construct something different and new and life-giving liberative for myself and others. And that is, I think I would like to say the heart of this project, certainly the intention behind it. So my book is about in so many ways, just understanding purity culture as a social historical movements that mobilized young people to reinforce its messaging. And that is different than I think a lot of us have come to think about purity culture as this very particular 10-year movements, nineties into the two thousands. This sort of isolated thing run primarily by organizations like True Love Waits. But instead, and I’m thinking with a lot of scholars here that the purity culture, as we know is actually connected to a longer history of purity cultures, plural, particularly in the U.S., like the social purity movements at the turn of the century, the social hygiene movements, eugenics, racial purity movements. There are a lot of ideologies, there’s a lot of themes of these movements that are very similar across time. And in these movements, young people had a role, usually not as young people who could make decisions for themselves, but as symbols. Symbols of innocence, symbols of bodies that need protected, especially protected against the racial other or the dangers of the city, things like that. Again, different times and places. And so part of my project is exposing this history, exposing this longer, deeper insidiousness of purity culture and also recognizing how young people are both vulnerable victims to the movement, but also complicit as humans are choice makers. We have agency even when our ability to make choices are really constrained. And so I write about how White teens in particular had a kind of access to power that their Black and Brown peers didn’t. So I think about who were the leaders in our youth group who were presumed to be pure from the beginning, and so through that sort of critique and sort of theoretical position, I offer a new way to think about sexual ethics that isn’t predicated on the rules of purity culture or even a specific telos a particular vision, but a sexual ethics that invites young people into the conversation. No longer are they just sort of the symbols of purity or impurity, but are part of the conversation and honors, I think the best parts about teenagers, their creativity, their desires, their boundary pushing, all of those things.
Dan: We will eventually do a whole podcast on this, but in that process, what I want to come back to is this is what you’re inviting people to in the Certificate of Living theology into challenging not to merely deconstruct, but the invitation is really back to a deepened, impassioned relationship with Jesus, and what does it mean to grow in relationship with the living presence of God? And I think one of the ways that you all have planned to do that is through listening labs, through not just hearing good, brilliant men and women teach, but actually engaging in the process in ways that has been pretty central to the lifeblood of all the programs. That is a kind of in storied engagement, not merely with the material, but with your own growing constructive theological self. So what do you do and understand with regard to the listening labs?
Lauren: Yeah, I’ll answer the question two ways. One is, yes, we have listening labs, which are, I mean, their classes per se, but the word lab is in there, right? It’s a practice space. There’s spaces to help students slow down and listen well. Listen well to themselves and also listen well to others. Listening is a good skill to have these days. We are, I would say, culturally not very good at listening. And I remember in the sort of version of this course that I took as a student, just the growing skill of listening, not just to respond like, oh, how am I going to respond to that? But actually listening and how disruptive that is and vulnerable that is to just listen and hear well. This is also, I don’t want to create a bifurcation between the listening labs and the courses because I would say I can only speak to my courses but if you’re expecting a sort of banking model of education where there’s an expert that sits up there on the Zoom screen, just lecturing at you without asking something of you and the sort of communal classroom, this isn’t what we do here at The Seattle School. We have smaller class sizes. We are asking you to do the work together, do create theologies together in class, listen well to each other in class. The listening labs are a place to really hone that skill. But it is part of the whole certificate. It’s part of the whole Seattle School experience.
Dan: Well, I love the fact that the idea of listening bears the vulnerability of not denying what you believe, but allowing the difference of other approaches and understandings to be received, not to be quickly critiqued, not to be found fault with, but to actually be asking, what might this thought, this theology, what might it be speaking to that I need to receive in that reception? You may not even have agreement, but you’ve done the difficult work of allowing that vulnerability to take in a perspective that will challenge, will invite some degree of clarification of your own understanding and may not shift your view, but will always nuance it. So in that sense, I think it is a skill that is not only lacking, but in this culture almost hated and the same sense of empathy being dangerous, the capacity to truly listen, merely mollifies the differences, and just gives people who you don’t agree with ground. Well, listening is really the heart of hospitality. So what I see you doing in this program is offering a different kind of hospitality to what the work of theology is inviting people to.
Rachael: I love that. Yeah. So if you were to think about if someone’s listening and they’re going, okay, maybe we could talk a little bit just some of the actual logistics. What does a certificate at The Seattle School look like? What does that mean?
Lauren: Yeah, so this certificate is a one year graduate level program. It starts in January and ends the following December. You can take it as a non-credit student, so you can just, it’s sort of auditing these courses and getting as much out of it as you want to, or you can take it for credit so that you can have those credits applied to another graduate program, or you may find that you want to dive all the way in and pursue a master’s degree. So you have two different tracks that you can do there. And you have a series of classes that are all on Wednesdays, which is just a great way to remember and schedule. So the first one starts in January, Christology and historical context, which is with me, Wednesday is Midday Pacific time, and you’ll take about two classes a term, it’ll be one sort of theology class and one listening lab all on Wednesdays with about an hour break in between those two courses.
Rachael: That’s awesome. And so they would take three different courses throughout the certificate with a listening lab that’s a partner or a companion to that course. And yeah, just I’ll say if this is something that you’re interested in, as Lauren said, it’s starting in January and you can go to the seattleschool.edu click on the programs tab and you’ll see a link for Living Theology Certificate. You can also reach out to admissions at The Seattle School. I’m not in any way trying to end our conversation. I just wanted to give people that little cue if you’re like, oh, I’m really okay. I need to remember to go look up more information about that. But Lauren, I’m just deeply grateful for your very steadfast wrestling. And I love your emphasis that it’s not just about deconstructing or being critical, but it’s about also getting to the meat of what is the good that needs to be stewarded and nuanced and shared with other people. And in my experience, some of my favorite theologians, well, all of my favorite theologians, are writing, I always say in some ways their writing and they’re out of such profound need of their own core questions. So I think about someone like Jürgen Moltmann, who was probably one of my first kind of theologians I read, who was new to me, wasn’t one of the kind of most well-known, at least to this little Southern Baptist girl. And the ways was talking about a suffering God. This was probably my entrance into, man, how we understand what’s happening in this story of God and the characteristics of God is just really important. So yeah, I loved that The Seattle School invited me to bring my questions of, I need to wrestle well with these. They feel like matters of life and death and to take that seriously. And so even though this is a shorter certificate, I think it is an opportunity if you find you’re looking for places to have theological conversations, that you have deep questions that you’re wrestling with, obviously you don’t have to go to graduate school to do that, and you don’t have to go to any one community, but I do think this could be a great place other to find peers who won’t think you’re crazy, who won’t be like, that’s not a book club I want to sign up for who can make space for you and who you can make space for. So I don’t know if you guys have any other thoughts, but…
Dan: Well, it’s who I want to be part of this, and I’ll say two, and then I’d love to hear your concluding thoughts. But the first is a group of people who would say, I’m not a theologian, those are the people I want desperately to go… you’re more of theologian than you think you are because you are probably bound to theologies you’ve never thought through. So to be in that position of going, no, everyone’s a theologian, and wouldn’t it be more helpful to begin to explore what’s in the attic that may be influencing you more than, and a second group of people are therapists. I’m, again, it burdens me how few therapists have really done the work of reflecting on theological categories and seeing the interplay of those worlds. So those are my two groups, therapists and people who don’t think they’re theologians. Who for you?
Lauren: I’ve been thinking about this group and it’s me. It’s me. I would say people who have whatever this means for them, but deconstructed from something of their childhood faith or young adult faith, but are not done with Jesus, that’s me. Those are my students. We’ve said this in different ways, but this is not, I don’t want to say it’s not for, it’s not expected that you have any theological background to do this. And actually, there’s such a gift of bringing whoever you are with the expertise that you have in your world into conversation with theology and to bring your questions. I think about graduate school in general, I think to this line from a favorite musician of mine, it’s just I have questions that lead to more questions, and that is grad school. And I think that that is what this program offers as well. Not answers per se, but questions that lead to more questions.
Dan: Again, no one do we trust more for you to be able to engage the heart of Jesus in the midst of the questions that drive you, not merely to more questions, but to the one who is the one who receives our questions with such hospitality. Again, thank you. Thank you, Lauren. Look forward to more.
Lauren: Thank you both.