Sophia Associate Professor of Religious and Theological Studies

Dr. Demian Wheeler is the Sophia Associate Professor of Religious and Theological Studies and director of Advanced Studies at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. He came to United in 2015 as a Louisville Institute Postdoctoral Fellow. He holds a PhD from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he specialized in American liberal theology.

Wheeler is the author of Religion within the Limits of History Alone: Pragmatic Historicism and the Future of Theology (State University of New York Press, 2020) and the co-editor of Conceiving an Alternative: Philosophical Resources for an Ecological Civilization (Process Century Press, 2019). He has also written a number of journal articles and book chapters on religious naturalism, empirical theology, process philosophy, and ground-of-being theism, among other topics.

Wheeler is currently working on a book about pantheism and the problem of evil, with a particular focus on the murder of George Floyd, the coronavirus pandemic, and the climate crisis. He lives in Minnesota with his wife, Victoria, and their son, Shailer.

Degrees

• PhD, Union Theological Seminary (2014)
• MPhil, Union Theological Seminary (2012)
• MA Iliff, School of Theology (2004)
• BS, University of Valley Forge (1999)

Books

• Religion within the Limits of History Alone: Pragmatic Historicism and the Future of Theology
• Conceiving an Alternative: Philosophical Resources for an Ecological Civilization

Recent Articles and Book Chapters

• “Coronavirus, Pantheistic Naturalism, and the Problem of Evil: A Post-Pandemic Theology,” in Threshold Dwellers in the Time of Global Pandemic, edited by Eleazar S. Fernandez (Wipf and Stock, 2022)
• “The Spirituality of Size: The Religious Qualities of Pantheistic God Metaphors,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 42.1 (January 2021)
• “Seizing a Whiteheadian Alternative: A Retrieval of the Empirical Option in Process Thought,” in Conceiving an Alternative: Philosophical Resources for an Ecological Civilization, edited by Demian Wheeler and David E. Conner (Process Century Press, 2019)
• “Deus sive Natura: Pantheism as a Variety of Religious Naturalism,” in The Routledge Handbook of Religious Naturalism, edited by Donald A. Crosby and Jerome A. Stone (Routledge, 2018)
• Review of Deep Pantheism: Toward a New Transcendentalism, by Robert S. Corrington, The Journal of Religion 98.3 (July 2018)
• “Bernard Loomer as a Bridge between Whitehead and Tillich: Towards a Ground-of-Being Process Theology,” The Bulletin of the North American Paul Tillich Society 44.1 (January 2018)
• Review of Pluralism: The Future of Religion, by Kenneth Rose, American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 38.2 (May 2017)
• “Is a Process Form of Ecstatic Naturalism Possible? A Reading of Donald Crosby,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 37.1 (January 2016)
• “American Religious Empiricism and the Possibility of an Ecstatic Naturalist Process Metaphysics,” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 8.2 (June 2014)
• “Big History and the Size of God: Holistic Historicism as a Pathway to Religious Naturalism,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 34.3 (September 2013)

Research Interests

• American Liberal Theology
• The Chicago School of Theology
• Historicism
• Religious Naturalism
• Empirical Theology
• Pragmatism
• Process Philosophy and Theology
• Religious Pluralism and Theologies of Religions
• Atheism and Radical Theologies
• Concepts of God
• The Problem of Evil and Suffering
• Ground-of-Being Theology

Sample Courses

• What is Religion?
• Constructive Theology
• History of Modern Theologies
• Black Theology
• God
• Unitarian and Universalist Theologies
• Radical Theologies and the Challenge of Atheism
• Public Theology
• God, Suffering, and the Problem of Evil