Visit our faculty and alumni presentations at Wild Goose:

with Billie Hoard & Paul Hoard, PhD

What does it mean to flourish in a world shaped by empire, assimilation, and the slow violence of respectability? This workshop invites participants into an encounter between virtue ethics, psychoanalysis, and queer liberationist theology鈥攁rguing that classical virtue frameworks, long co-opted by conformist and imperial projects, can be reclaimed and reimagined through the lens of liberation and Lacanian theory. Drawing on their collaborative work in disgust theology and queer liberationist frameworks, Billie and Paul Hoard will introduce the concept of eucontamination (the redemptive disruption of purity logics) as a foundation for rethinking what virtuous life might look like. The session will explore virtues like Queer Prudence, Magnanimity, and Courage alongside distinctly liberationist virtues forged in the experience of marginalized communities navigating empire’s edges. This is not a workshop about whether queer people can be virtuous. It assumes they already are, and asks how flourishing on the margins enhances our understanding and practice of virtue. Participants will leave with a richer theological vocabulary for resisting assimilation and embodying liberation in their communities

with Paul Hoard, PhD Associate Professor

This play-filled experience explores the intersections of games, liturgy, and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. Games provide a fascinating exploration into the nature of reality, how we encounter the other within ourselves and across the table, as well as powerful moments of rupture and repair within our lives. Participants will be invited to engage in play and reflect upon the psychological and theological implications of the captivating nature of play.

with Joel Kiekintveld, PhD Affiliate Faculty

In the moment we are living through, it can be hard to know how to respond to what is happening in the world. Many are asking, 鈥淲hat do I/we do?鈥� U2 stepped into this questioning and our fraught times with the EP Days of Ash, offering a liturgy to consider how we might live in the world right now. Join us for this breakout session that will be part listening party, part book talk, and all practical application for living in the world guided by the six songs on Days of Ash.

*NOTE: This breakout is based on the new book, “A Verb and Not a Noun: Days of Ash, U2鈥檚 Lenten Liturgy” (SacraSage Press) by聽Joel聽Kiekintveld, which is being released at Wild Goose. Workshop attendees will be able to purchase the book at a 50% discount.

If you鈥檇 like to meet up with a 天美视频 representative during the festival, please send an email to Lauren Peiser, lpeiser@theseattleschool.edu, Director of Partnerships.

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Our faculty will be well represented throughout the event! Dr. Paul Hoard, Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology, will join a panel exploring the role of disgust and its implications for faith, psychology, and culture.

Register for the full conference to hear from 天美视频 faculty alongside inspiring voices like Kelly Brown Douglas, Reggie Williams, Andy Root, Roberto Che Espinoza, and Pete Enns.

We’d love to connect with you while we’re there. If you’d like to meet with a 天美视频 representative during the conference, email Lauren Peiser, Director of Partnerships, at lpeiser@theseattleschool.edu.

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Drs. Paul Hoard (psychology) and Ron Ruthruff (theology) have spent the past three years grappling with this challenge within a theological institution. In this webinar, engage with the psychological and theological factors that often inhibit white individuals鈥� ability to sustain anti-racist action鈥攑articularly the temptation to protect an idealized self-image rather than confront uncomfortable realities.

Participants will explore policies and practices that cultivate equity and inclusion in churches, schools, and agencies. This conversation asks new questions to help organizations move toward credible, community-rooted anti-racist practice.

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Join this webinar to explore theory and聽practical application, offering ways leaders and communities can work with disgust as it arises around bodies, stories, social difference, and conflict.

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This year鈥檚 graduation ceremony will be held at Town Hall Seattle on Saturday, June 20, at 10:00 am PT.

We look forward to welcoming graduating students and their guests in person for the celebration.

We ask all alumni and current students attending to please leave preferred seating for family & friends of graduates.

We invite the wider community to join us live via our .

Graduates should report downstairs by 8:30 am. Doors will open to guests at 9:30 am. Please find parking information .

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This webinar traces how American neo-evangelicalism eventually coopted the therapeutic language it once rejected鈥攁nd how purity culture emerged as a product of that accommodation.聽By the 1970s, leaders like James Dobson had fully embraced the language of therapeutic Christianity. These leaders taught that the nuclear family was the foundation of a strong country鈥攁nd that adolescents were both its most vulnerable members and its greatest threat. In this period, 鈥渇amily values鈥� rhetoric鈥攅vident in anti-abortion activism, welfare reform debates, and early purity discourse鈥攃onsistently positioned young people at the center of a perceived moral crisis. Within this framework, sexual purity was framed as a corrective intervention, promising to heal adolescents, restore families, and ultimately safeguard the nation.

Join this webinar to consider how understanding purity culture鈥攁nd its appropriation of therapeutic language鈥攕hapes ongoing conversations in Christian communities about sexuality, faith, and personal growth.

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How do we use the transformative tools of psychology and theology, but also not get stuck in models that lack responsiveness to these times?

Drawing on insights from psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, and sociologist, Philip Rieff, we will explore alternative pathways to discourse that critique the assumption that knowledge is held through mastery, control, and order.

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One Table Preaching: Making Room for Every Voice

This is a one-day laboratory for pastors, lay preachers, and ministry communicators who kneel at the pulpit each week between clashing world-views. Through keynote storytelling, scripture-rooted workshops, and hands-on listening labs, participants will practice sermons that bridge cultural, political, generational, and socioeconomic gaps. You鈥檒l leave with concrete frameworks, fresh metaphors, and a renewed courage to proclaim good news to congregations as complex as the world God loves.

The 2026 Reimagining Preaching Conference will equip clergy to navigate the complex reality of preaching to congregations divided by cultural, political, generational, and socioeconomic differences.聽

1. Unlike traditional homiletics training that focuses on exegesis and delivery, this conference addresses the pastoral challenge of maintaining unity while addressing divisive issues faithfully.聽

2. Participants will learn practical tools for self-awareness, cultural exegesis, and bridge-building communication that honors both biblical truth and congregational diversity.聽

3. The conference does not prioritize advancing progressive or conservative agendas, but developing the courage and skill to address hard topics while fostering inclusion and genuine dialogue across differences.

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Join us for an evening of conversation with Dr. Thomas Jay Oord, theologian, philosopher, and leading voice in Open and Relational Theology, as we explore fresh ways of thinking about God, the self, and human relationships at the intersection of theology and psychology.

Dr. Oord鈥攆ounder and director of the Center for Open and Relational Theology鈥攊s widely known for his work on love, freedom, science and religion, evil and power, and the transformative implications of relationality. He will be joined by Dr. Paul Hoard and Dr. Joel Kiekintveld for an engaging dialogue that brings theological insight into conversation with psychological theory and lived experience.

Open and Relational Theology proposes that God is inherently relational and that the future is genuinely open. Rather than controlling all outcomes, God gives and receives in a dynamic relationship with creation, moving with creatures into an unfolding future.

Together, we will explore questions such as:

• How does Open and Relational Theology intersect with psychology?
• What changes when we understand God as infinitely loving and relational?
• How does an open future鈥攐ne not fully determined by God or humans鈥攕hape our individual and collective psyches?
• In what ways might these ideas invite us to relate to one another differently?

This informal yet scholarly event welcomes students and members of the public who are curious about new frameworks for thinking about faith, psychology, and what it means to be human.

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