This webinar invites participants to consider how understanding purity culture as a therapeutic project shapes ongoing conversations about sexuality, faith, and formation in Christian communities today.

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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’ll 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. 

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. 

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

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—founder and director of the Center for Open and Relational Theology—is 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—one not fully determined by God or humans—shape 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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Bring your own questions, thoughts, and hopes! We’d love to chat with you about what you can begin to anticipate as a part of our relational learning community.

Dr. Paul Hoard is an Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology who teaches a variety of courses in our Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology (MACP) program.

Dr. Lauren Sawyer is an Affiliate Faculty who teaches at ������Ƶ & is also the Manager of Curriculum and Instruction at Allender Center

Event Zoom details will be sent after you register.

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Schedule

8:00 am-8:30 am: Check in & Breakfast

8:30 am-9:30 am: Poster Reception & Underrepresented Voices Art Gallery

9:45 am-11:00 am: Plenary Speaker, Dr. Lauren Sawyer

11:15 am-12:30 pm: Breakout Sessions

12:30 pm-1:00 pm Wrap Up: Large Classroom

Day of Scholarship 2026 Poster Presentations

Day of Scholarship 2026 Breakout Session Presenters

Underrepresented Voices Art Gallery

Theme: Imagining Unlearning as Transformation

As people of color and members of other marginalized communities, we often find ourselves represented through the lenses of the majority—through stories, symbols, and images not our own. We learn to conform ourselves into majority boxes, learn to tell and recognize only majority-friendly stories. The work of transformation, then, begins with unlearning: unlearning the narratives that have shaped how we see ourselves and how we are seen.

Sometimes that unlearning means gently loosening, or breaking open, the hold of containers never built with us in mind, containers that have taught us to shrink, translate, or edit our ways of being. As we unlearn those constraints, we begin to rediscover the spaces within and between us that were always ours, though we may have learned to forget them.

This gallery invites artists and creators of color to explore how unlearning can itself be an act of artmaking; how the shedding of imposed images opens space for symbols that heal, connect, and reimagine identity. Each piece becomes a new story added to the collective pot, expanding what wholeness can look like when we are fully seen and self-defined.

We are welcoming all mediums of art and creative work. While the gallery in ������Ƶ building will be a physical gallery, we invite submissions that are not traditional physical/visual mediums. For example, if you are a musician, songwriter, dancer, etc., consider contributing a visual manifestation of your craft for the gallery. This could be a photo of you doing your craft, some lyrics, a QR code linking to a recording of your piece, etc.

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Gary is the associate professor of Pastoral Theology and Social Transformation and the director of Racial Intelligence Systems at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. He earned his PhD from Brite Divinity School, where he focused on issues related to young African American men through the lens of public pastoral theology. His newly released book, Playing the Game: Embodied Brilliance Beyond the Moral Limits of Race in Sports, investigates the intersection of race and ethics in cultural misinterpretations of Black athleticism in the United States.

The lecture will be followed by a panel discussion with Dr. Monique Gadson, Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology, and Dr. Joel Kiekintveld, Affiliate Faculty of Theology & Culture.

After the panel, there will be time to purchase a signed copy of his new book, Playing the Game: Embodied Brilliance Beyond the Moral Limits of Race in Sports.

RSVP is required to attend on campus at ������Ƶ (1130 Rainier Ave S, Seattle, WA). Note: Low-residency students attending the Winter 2026 residency do not need to RSVP.

The event will not be livestreamed, but will be recorded for future viewing.

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Before coming to ������Ƶ, spent 14 years in advocacy and prevention outreach for survivors of sexual exploitation and human trafficking. Now a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in private practice, her work centers on integrated, whole-body healing with adults navigating chronic illness, newly diagnosed neurodivergence, and complex trauma. Victoria also provides supervision and mentorship for clinicians and advocates, fostering sustainable and authentic clinical presence grounded in integrity, humanity, and care for the body in the healing process.

Each Admissions Coffee Hour features a different voice, topic, or aspect of ������Ƶ. Bring your questions, thoughts, and hopes—we’d love to connect with you about what you can expect from our learning community.

Event Zoom details will be sent after you register.

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Lauren, an affiliate faculty member at ������Ƶ, curriculum and instruction manager at the Allender Center, and a graduate of our Theology and Culture program, will discuss her writing process and share why she chose to study purity culture—and for whom this research matters.

Come prepared for an honest conversation about youth agency, complicity, and the uncomfortable truths that emerge when we stop viewing white adolescents solely as victims and start examining their role as participants in systems of harm.

Lauren will discuss her journey of closely reading the voices of those who grew up pledging their commitment to sexual purity and what she discovered about the centuries-old patterns of protection, privilege, and power that shaped their experiences.

The conversation will be followed by a reception with small bites and refreshments, with the opportunity to purchase a signed copy of Growing Up Pure.

The event is free to attend, but seating is limited — please register for your spot.

More about the book:

Gaining mass popularity in the mid-1990s with the True Love Waits rally on the Washington Mall, purity culture began as an urge from evangelical conservatives for Christian adolescents to publicly commit to practicing abstinence until marriage. Throughout this decade and the next, millions of evangelical teenagers performed their commitment to sexual purity by signing pledges and wearing purity rings.

This book examines the shaping of purity culture in the United States, looking specifically at the experiences of white youth. It shows that white girls and white queer youth were vulnerable to the purity movement, but that they were also complicit in its white supremacist oppressive structure. It makes the case that purity culture follows in the footsteps of other purity movements in the United States, and is very much tied to centuries of anti-Black racism and xenophobia in US social history, seeing white youth as in need of protection, usually from a racialized, sexualized other.

While other works have focused on the ways in which purity culture has victimized young people, Sawyer argues that their perceived status as victims lets them too easily off the hook. White youth have been afforded the privilege of participating in purity culture’s harmful behaviors without being called to account. Closely reading adolescents’ stories of growing up in purity culture, she uncovers youth as agents, participants, and beneficiaries of its white supremacist framing, even as they were still vulnerable to its harmful teachings.

Praise for Growing Up Pure:

“Sawyer’s analysis helps to fill a significant gap in purity culture research that avoids the questions of white women’s racial embodiment. Her contribution moves the conversation into the complexity that emerges when we understand that evangelical purity culture is as much a project of white supremacy as it is misogyny and anti-queerness.” ~Sara Moslener, author of After Purity: Race, Sex, and Religion in White Christian America

“Growing up Pure makes a novel intervention in popular culture, gender studies, and religious studies, centering youth agency as participants in purity culture and adolescent sexuality. If in fact, teens have broadened their definition of sex and sexuality, Sawyer’s well-crafted assessment urges those of us writing about sexuality, gender, and race to think about the ramifications to this self-selection.” ~Monique Moultrie, author of Passionate and Pious: Religious Media and Black Women’s Sexuality

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