Demian Wheeler

Sophia Associate Professor of Religious and Theological Studies, Director of Advanced Studies

Core Faculty

Dr. Demian Wheeler 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

 

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