Learning Pastoral Imagination
An eighteen-year qualitative, longitudinal research project on learning ministry in practice in collaboration with the Rev. Dr. Eileen Campbell-Reed.
Visit projectWriter, Teacher, Pastor, Practical Theologian
About
Christian Scharen is the Gordon Braatz Chair and Professor of Practical Theology at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. He is known for groundbreaking work on theology, ethics and ethnography, helping launch the new field of theological ethnography. A founder of the international Network for Ecclesiology and Ethnography (with Prof. Pete Ward), he has given lectures, collaborated on research projects, and mentored students around the world. His most recent research and writing critically engages histories of settler colonialism and violence against Indigenous peoples in the Americas. He is author of two forthcoming books dealing with America’s—and his family’s—pioneer past. After Laura: Notes on Inheriting a Pioneer Legacy in America will be published by TBA in 2028 Custer Died for Our Sins: A Practical Theology of Repair will be published by Fortress Press in August 2027. He has written more than a dozen other books and scores of articles, chapters, and reports on a wide variety of topics. An ordained Lutheran pastor, he received his PhD in Religion from Emory University. Raised in Montana, he currently lives in Chicago with his wife, Pierrette, and French bulldog Walt. They have three adult sons, Isaiah, Finn, and Owen.
Latest Release
Custer Died For Our Sins
How might North American Christian inheritors of a pioneer settler past work toward repair?
Scharen traces the intertwined stories of the Ingalls and Deloria families on lands near De Smet, South Dakota, offering theological grounding for speaking complicated truths and resources for moving toward practical actions that repair relationships.
“A brilliant, deeply personal, and bracingly honest exploration of the injustice at the root of American pioneer mythology.”
Forthcoming Memoir
After Laura
When Christian Scharen’s father died, he knew he finally would have to face his complicated relationship to his father—and his father’s famous American pioneer story. His childhood in Montana and Wyoming was formed by the pioneer tales of Laura Ingalls Wilder, but he’d never grappled with the fact that they were his family stories, too.
He resolved to drive west from Pepin, Wisconsin, where his great-grandmother Lottie and her double-cousin Laura were both born in 1867. He stopped to visit the land where the Ingalls homesteaded as well as sites important to the Indigenous peoples whose land it was prior to the pioneers’ arrival.
Along the way, he discovered the awful truth of land theft and genocide perpetrated against Native Nations, a truth his own family stories elide. At turns loving and heart-wrenching, this book looks for—and finds— hard won healing with a father, even as its explores repair required for healing a nation’s relationship with its original occupants and with the land itself.
Research
Future Church Pilots
A Lilly Endowment, Inc. funded project on experimental churches and other spiritual gatherings seeking to understand the shape of the church’s future through learning from the vanguard of church today.
Visit projectBeyond the Land Acknowledgement
An ongoing initiative of research, writing, and activism focused on telling a truer story of white settler history in the United States and exploring pathways for repair in relationship to Indigenous peoples and the land.
Visit projectThe Network for Ecclesiology and Ethnography
An international network of scholars working at the intersections of theology and qualitative research founded by Christian Scharen and Pete Ward in 2007. The Network includes an annual conference in Durham England, biennial conferences in North America, a Brill academic journal called Ecclesial Practices, and a program unit for the American Academy of Religion also titled Ecclesial Practices
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Newsletter
Subscribe to my Substack for updates, essays, and reflections on theology, culture, and repair.
My little Substack on South Prairie (that's my street in Chicago). Writing about my pioneer family story, the violence towards Indigenous people our story left out, and what repair might be needed if we face the full truth. I also write about writing, about theological education, and about people that inspire me.
Engagements
Speaking
I am open to joining your community to teach a class, speak for an event, host a book signing, or preach at a worship service. If you’d like to inquire about having me for your event, please email with your details.
Please note I use a sliding scale based on ability to pay, and 50% of my speaking fees support Indigenous organizations and causes like NDN Collective’s Landback organizing, Woyatan Lutheran Church in Rapid City, South Dakota, and other activist Indigenous organizations and ministries.
