Humility in Seminary Student Formation: A Mixed Method Community Action Study

This cross-sectional mixed method community action study exploring the virtue of humility was conducted as part of a collaborative practical theology project at a pluralistic, ecumenical Mainline Protestant seminary. Students ( N = 65) in a spiritual formation graduate class completed quantitative measures of humility, spiritual well-being, differentiation of self (DoS), mentalization, and mindfulness, while open-ended qualitative data captured their perspectives about the role of humility in formation. Qualitative results revealed important nuances about emerging religious leaders’ views on humility, including experiencing this virtue as (a) facilitative to their vocational growth (e.g., promoting learning, self-understanding, relational connections, and deeper spirituality), (b) challenging (e.g., self-deprecating, unnecessary, and contrary to ministry), or (c) some combination of both. Quantitative results documented positive associations between relational capacities (e.g., DoS, mentalization) and humility, and these links were mediated by mindful awareness. Implications for measuring and promoting holistic spiritual development among emerging religious leaders are discussed.

Psychometric Properties of the Clergy Suicide Prevention Competencies Developmental Rubric and Faith Leaders’ Readiness to Address Suicide Stigma

Faith leaders (FL) have a key role in suicide prevention. One of their roles is to address suicide stigma in faith communities. Are they ready to do so? The Clergy Suicide Prevention Skills Developmental Rubric (CSPCDR) was developed to understand and assess clergy suicide prevention skills. The psychometric properties of the CSPCDR are reported in order to assess FL’ readiness to address suicide stigma. Sample 1, 186 Protestant seminary students completed the CSPCDR twice, resulting in Pearson’s r = 0.77. Sample 2, 187 Protestant clergy and lay ministers completed the CSPCDR before and after one of eight trainings to test construct validity; the CSPCDR performed as expected. Results suggest how to expand FL’ readiness to address suicide stigma in faith communities.

Advancing the Evangelical Mind: Melvin Grove Kyle, J. Gresham Machen, and the League of Evangelical Students

This article seeks to analyze Melvin Grove Kyle and the growth of the League of Evangelical Students (LES) founded by J. Gresham Machen and Princeton Seminary students in 1925. Both Kyle and Machen were scholarly leaders in the LES and served on the organization’s board together. This paper will establish the importance of Melvin Grove Kyle as a leading evangelical scholar and biblical archaeologist. It will also explain the origins and growth of the LES and how various Presbyterians influenced the organization and sought to advance a broader evangelical Protestant intellectual life in the difficult period of the 1920s and 1930s. Machen’s role will be highlighted, and the thinking of various evangelical scholars associated with the LES will be analyzed. This study is important because it helps us grasp how evangelical Protestantism rehabilitated and advanced itself intellectually in a period when the movement faced educational marginalization in the wider culture.

Orienting to Otherness: Intellectual Humility, Moral Foundations, and Mature Alterity Outcomes

Scholars and practitioners have increasingly called for the development of social justice commitment, intercultural competence, and appreciation of diversity among ministers and helping professionals. In religious contexts, individual factors may contribute to differences in the degree to which spiritual leaders emphasize intercultural and social justice initiatives. Personality factors, such as virtues and specific moral commitments, predict the degree to which people report positive attitudes and demonstrate mature alterity. In this study, we explored the degree to which intellectual humility predicted mature alterity outcomes after controlling for the effects of five moral foundations (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, purity) in a sample of Christian seminary students in the United States. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed for ministry and the helping professions.

Music for Others

Musical activity is one of the most ubiquitous and highly valued forms of social interaction in North America—from sporting events to political rallies, concerts to churches. Its use as an affective agent for political and religious programs suggests that it has ethical significance, but it is one of the most undertheorized aspects of both theological ethics and music scholarship. Music for Others: Care, Justice, and Relational Ethics in Christian Music fills part of this scholarly gap by focusing on the religious aspects of musical activity, particularly on the practices of Christian communities. It is based on ethnomusicological fieldwork at three Protestant churches and interviews with a group of seminary students, combined with theories of discourse, formation, response, and care ethics oriented toward restorative justice. The book argues that relationships are ontological for both human beings and musical activity. It further argues that musical meaning and emotion converge in human bodies such that music participates in personal and communal identity construction in affective ways—yet these constructions are not always just. Thus, Music for Others argues that music is ethical when it preserves people in and restores people to just relationships with each other, and thereby with God.

Humility and Relational Spirituality as Predictors of Well-Being among Christian Seminary Students

The present study investigated the unique contributions of relational spirituality and humility factors to seminary students’ eudaimonic well-being in a diverse sample ( n = 111) of urban seminary students. Hypotheses were developed in conversation with this research on humility, seminary student formation, and virtue ethics. As hypothesized, the relational spirituality factors of differentiation of self and quest exploration each made a significant independent contribution in predicting students’ well-being over and above impression management. In addition, humility-cultivating practices and dispositional humility were modestly correlated and each made a significant independent contribution in predicting well-being over and above relational spirituality factors and impression management. Implications for future research and for seminary student formation are discussed.