Exploring life’s most important questions
Who is God? Why is there a world? What’s the point of life? What is the Bible? What does faith have to do with art, politics, technology, and leisure? What should we think and do about the world’s most complex problems? How do we become wise?
In the light of Jesus Christ, students and faculty in the School of Theology & Christian Ministry explore some of life’s most interesting and important questions. Rooted in our Christ-centered identity, an ecumenical and theologically diverse faculty introduce students to an array of traditions and perspectives. Seeking truth together in a vibrant and supportive academic community, students develop friendships, find mentors, and grow intellectually, spiritually, and socially.
Whether they end up teaching, starting a non-profit organization, entering ministry, becoming a writer or counselor, working in the field of law, healthcare, technology, the arts, or anything else, the School of Theology & Christian Ministry offers students a solid foundation for pursuing lives of meaning and purpose.
Undergraduate Programs
Friendship and fellowship are central to our life together. Belmont provides students with spiritual formation opportunities through a variety of student-led faith development organizations that meet to worship, pray, study and serve. Explore on-campus faith communities at Belmont: On-Campus Faith Communities
The STCM has benefitted from the generosity of many donors over the years. This allows us to award scholarships to multiple students each year, including two full-tuition scholarships; the Madden Scholarship for one male student and the Servant Leadership Scholarship for one female student. If you apply to any STCM major before December 1, you will automatically be considered for scholarships. Apply to Belmont.
STCM graduates have gone on to pastor churches, become worship leaders, start non-profit organizations, receive national teacher awards, work as social justice attorneys, and become professors and deans of universities.
"I graduated from Belmont University with a major in Religion and the Arts and a minor in English Writing. During my time in Belmont's School of Theology & Christian Ministry, I was challenged and supported by professors like Dr. McAbee and Dr. Guthrie, who encouraged me to pursue my passions while still a student. My work with people experiencing homelessness began in high school, and during my sophomore year at Belmont, I initiated “Community Arts Days” at Room In The Inn (RITI), a local homeless services nonprofit. My mentors in the School of Theology & Christian Ministry were instrumental in shaping my journey, and many of my former professors continue to support the work of RITI and Daybreak Arts, an organization we launched that empowers artists impacted by homelessness in Nashville."
-Nicole Brandt Minyard
Founder & Executive Director at Daybreak Arts, Class of 2014
“The School of Theology & Christian Ministry took my earnest yet shallow understanding of what it meant to follow the way of Jesus and gave it depth and shape. I first began to see teaching - as well as other embodied and practical endeavors - as a vocational response to God's design for the world because of professors like Dr. Steve Guthrie, Dr. Donovan McAbee, and Dr. Andy Watts. They challenged my dualistic theology of sacred and secular, exposing me both to historic Christian thought on what it means to be a creator of beauty in God's world and the current inequalities that order our nation. My experience at Belmont propelled me into some of the most disinvested neighborhoods in our country, yet grounded me in an understanding of a God who cultivates beauty in the ruins and chooses "what is low and despised in the world to bring to nothing things that are."
-Daniel Warner
Director of Teacher Development in Memphis, TN, 2020 West Tennessee Teacher of the Year, Class of 2013
Faculty in the STCM are at once Christ-centered and theologically diverse. Our professors come from a variety of church backgrounds and offer a broad range of Christian perspectives. Each one is committed to being an excellent teacher and mentor to students, and many are also well-known scholars and authors.
Visit our Faculty page.
Funded by a $32M grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc., the mission of the Creative Arts Collective is to explore and nurture the integral relationship between Christianity and the arts in order to inspire people from diverse contexts to discover and embrace the beauty and wisdom of the Christian story and encounter God through the arts.
Christina Carnes Ananias |
Christina Carnes Ananias is the Lilly Endowment Faculty Fellow in the School of Theology and Christian Ministry at Belmont University, where her research and teaching focuses on contemporary applications of Scripture and theology. Christina taught various art history courses at Charleston Southern University before pursuing her doctoral work at Duke University. |
| Art Seeking Understanding Contributor: “The Hope of Recognition: Seeing the ‘Other’ in Cézanne’s Portraits and Iconography” |
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| Contemporary Art and the Church Contributor: “Something From Nothing: A Theology of Nothingness and Silence in Yves Klein’s Le Vide” |
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| Theology, Modernity, and the Visual Arts Contributor: “Making ‘Pain Incarnate’: An Iconophilic Interpretation of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica” |
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David Dark |
David Dark is the critically acclaimed author of The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, Everyday Apocalypse, and The Gospel According to America. He teaches at the Tennessee Prison for Women and Belmont University. He holds a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University and a B.A. from Middle Tennessee State University. |
| Life's Too Short to Pretend You're Not Religious |  |
| The Sacredness of Questioning Everything |  |
| We Become What We Normalize |  |
Nicholas Norman-Krause |
Nicholas Norman-Krause earned a Ph.D. in Religion from Baylor University with a concentration in Theology and Ethics. He holds a Master of Divinity and certificate in Anglican studies from Duke University Divinity School and a Bachelor of Arts in Historical Theology from Moody Bible Institute. |
| Political Theology and the Conflicts of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, Summer 2025) |
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| T&T Clark Handbook to Political Theology Contributor: “The Third City: Radical Orthodoxy’s (Emphatically) Complex Political Theology” (with Jonathan Tran) |  |
| "Theologies of Labor and the Limits of Capital” in Journal of Moral Theology as a Way of Life: On Teaching and Learning the Christian Faith |
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Adam Neder |
Adam Neder is Professor of Theology and Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. Prior to arriving at Belmont, he was the Bruner-Welch Chair in Theology at Whitworth University, where he won numerous teaching awards. He received his M.Div. and Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. |
| Participation in Christ: An Entry into Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics (Columbia Series in Reformed Theology) |
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| Theology as a Way of Life: On Teaching and Learning the Christian Faith |
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Adam Perez |
Adam A. Perez earned a Doctor of Theology in liturgical studies with a secondary area in religion and the arts from Duke University Divinity School. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in music education from Trinity Christian College and a Master of Arts in religion and music from Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School. |
| WorshipLeaderResearch.com |  |
| The Worship Nerds |  |
Jesse Sun |
Jesse Sun holds a Ph.D. in World Christianity from Duke University. Having joined Belmont University in 2022, he is discovering a range of teaching interests, from Chinese films to the Bible, global history of Christianity, and Christianity and Marxism. |
| Surviving the Valley of the Shadow of Death: Cai Yongchun in the Cultural Revolution.” Church History 92, no. 2 (June 2023), 342–56. [open access journal article] |  |
| “Nationalism: The Great Convergence.” In Visions of Salvation: Chinese Christian Posters in an Age of Revolution, edited by Daryl Ireland, 53–73. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2023. [book chapter] |  |
Andy Watts |
Andy Watts is a Professor of Religion and serves as the Academic Coordinator for the STCM. Andy earned his PhD from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, writing on a theology of reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans. |
| “Challenged by Respect: Rethinking Service Learning on Native American Reservations" for Culturally Engaging Service-Learning in Diverse Communities (IGI Global, 2017) |
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| “Commentary on the Gospel of John”, Feasting on the Gospels (Westminster John Knox Press, 2015) |
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| Huffington Post, 2012-2017: 12 articles |  |
| Good Faith Media 2005-2011: 24 articles |  |
Jordan Wood |
Jordan Wood holds an M.A. from Saint Louis University and a Ph.D. from Boston College, both in Historical Theology. His interests range from Greek patristic theology to modern philosophy, especially Idealism. |
| Co-Host of History & Dogma |  |
| The Whole Mystery of Christ: Creation as Incarnation in Maximus Confessor |
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Phone: (615) 460-6437
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Ready to join our vibrant community at Belmont?
Reach out to the Admissions Coordinator, Danielle Walden, at 615-460-8340 or by email.