The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology announces that it will undertake the stewardship of Fuller Seminary’s Christ & Cascadia online journal. Christ & Cascadia will be housed in Resilient Leaders Project, a grant-funded program within the graduate school, under the leadership of Kate Rae Davis, Director, and Forrest Inslee, Editor.
“At The Seattle School, the core of our mission is service. Christ & Cascadia offers an opportunity to highlight the ways that leaders are serving in their unique cultural space. And, it’s a way for us to serve Christian leaders in the region by hosting conversations relevant to their work,” explained Kate Davis, commenting on the connection between the missions of the graduate school and the journal.
Christ & Cascadia was founded by Dr. Matthew Kaemingk as part of an initiative that became The Fuller Institute for Theology & Northwest Culture in 2013, generously funded by a grant from the Murdock Trust. The journal was intended to be a space to curate conversations in the overlap of Christian faith and Cascadia region’s culture, walking the line between academic and popular voices. It was paired with annual conferences to provide in-person incubator events where scholars, leaders in marketplace and ministry, and other culture-makers could network around a common faith and place. Together, the journal and the conferences forged a communal space engaging the unique intersection of Christianity and Pacific Northwest culture.
For years, the journal has published articles from Christian thought leaders across Cascadia—the bioregion from the Pacific Ocean to the Continental Divide, from northern California through southern Alaska. The journal brought together many academic partners like Whitworth University, The Seattle School, Regent College, Columbia Bible College, George Fox University, and Seattle Pacific University. As Fuller Seminary’s infrastructure changed, it became clear that the journal needed a new steward. Since Christ & Cascadia had a history of collaboration between local academic institutions, in many ways passing the baton to a new institution seemed natural. In 2019, Fuller Seminary agreed that The Seattle School should take over care and publication of the journal, with freedom to steward it into the future in new and innovative ways.
“The Seattle School acquired Christ & Cascadia in order to protect, continue, and build upon its contributions to regional faith life—particularly in the ways the journal has helped to build a sense of regional identity, and to foreground the voices of practitioners who have wisdom from experience to share,” noted Forrest, the newly-appointed editor of the journal. Forrest steps into the role already familiar with the journal, having been an author himself for the online publication.
“Christ & Cascadia will continue the tradition of highlighting contextualized, region-specific concerns for Christ-followers in Cascadia. Our point of growth will be a new emphasis on innovation in faith praxis. In other words, we’ll be asking: How are people re-imagining and modeling new faith praxis in ways that challenge the status quo, and lead to renewal and relevance?” explained Forrest.
The core offerings of the journal will remain much the same, with all content coming from authors living in the Cascadia region. Expect to see some variance, however, with the school anticipating new forms of communication on the site including video, audio, and photography.
Kate added, “Going forward, we hope to highlight innovative thinking and practice. ‘Christian leaders and communities’ conveys a narrow image for most people, and we want to show the abundance of breadth and diversity that the phrase holds in this region.”
The team is currently working to fully transition the journal before publishing articles, but in the meantime, you can subscribe to receive news about the journal here.