Seminary of the Southwest is pleased to announce the theme of the 58th Annual Blandy Lecture and Alumni Convocation, taking place Thursday, November 19, 2026. This year’s lecture, “The Future of an Inclusion: Charting New Pathways for the Integration of Mental Health and Theology,” will bring together two of Southwest’s leading voices to explore the intersections of faith, psychology, neuroscience, and healing.
Anthony Baker, PhD, Clinton S. Quin Professor of Systematic Theology, and Gena St. David, PhD, Director of the Loise Henderson Wessendorff Center for Counseling and Spirituality and Professor of Counselor Education, will engage in dialogue followed by a student Q&A.
The conversation will challenge the longstanding tendency to separate psychological practice from religious faith. Drawing on St. David’s research in nonviolent practice and Baker’s work in Anglican natural theology, the speakers will consider what becomes possible when counselors and ministers take one another’s disciplines seriously. How might faith, trust, and spiritual community contribute to measurable healing? And how might empirical understandings of healing reshape theological ideas of sin, grace, confession, and repentance?
At the heart of the conversation is a provocative question: Might this mutual inclusion rewrite the future of Freud’s illusion?
The Alumni Association of Seminary of the Southwest is pleased to announce the Rev. Robert Pace, PhD (MDiv ‘12), Rector at Trinity Episcopal Church in Fort Worth, Texas is this year’s Hal Brook Perry Award recipient and William Boesl (MSF ‘20), Director of Ministry Formation at Ascension in Austin, Texas, is this year’s Dave Scheider Award recipient. Both awards will be presented during this year’s Blandy Lecture and Alumni Convocation.
The 58th Blandy Lecture and Alumni Convocation is part of a full day of programming, including opportunities to visit a class, alumni award presentations, Eucharist, lunch with the Southwest community, exploring the campus, Evening Prayer, and a “dinner by the bite” reception before the lecture. The event is free and open to the Southwest community and alumni.
Find out more information and RSVP here.