The Academy of
Religious Leadership

Deepen | Develop | Disseminate

The Academy

The Academy of Religious Leadership (ARL) exists to enhance religious leadership education; convene a scholarly roundtable of leadership educators and professional practitioners for the purpose of faculty development and community; and foster and disseminate leadership education and research.

The Meeting

The ARL Annual Meeting invites scholars and practitioners into thoughtful conversation about the (r)evolutionary vocation of leadership. Our methods: discussing provocative, original papers/presentations, networking, and imagining an emerging future in the theological education, formation, and ongoing development of religious leaders in a fast-paced, challenging world.

The theme of our 2026 annual meeting will be “Public Leadership and Prophetic Witness”. It will be held in St. Paul, MN April 23-25, 2026.

The Journal

The Journal of Religious Leadership is published semi-annually by the Academy of Religious Leadership (ARL). As a peer-reviewed journal, the editorial team assesses articles by four criteria: scholarship (in an effort to promote faithful critical thinking about religious leadership), theological (as ARL is focused on religious leadership, matters of faith and practice are instrumental), expansive (the work of ARL seeks to extend and deepen both religion and leadership), and suggestive (work suggests outcomes, practices, behaviors, implications, etc. for readers to incorporate in their contexts).

Featured in the latest issue of the Journal for Religious Leadership

Articles

The Academy of Religious Leadership is pleased to announce the 2026 Spring issue of the Journal of Religious Leadership.
This issue is constituted differently than usual. It is a thematic retrospective of the tenure of Robert Martin as Editor, comprised of essays that have been previously published under his guidance. Dr. Martin comments,

Over the past eight years as editor, I’ve come to conclude that at this point in history, the transition from colonial to post/decolonial frameworks and processes of constituting community hold tremendous promise for reorienting and reordering religious communities as well as society at large. Although this transition may sound quite secular, I believe it resonates well with a robust incarnational and trinitarian practical theology…. [D]eveloping leadership for the transition from coloniality to post/decoloniality should be, in my view, an exceedingly important priority for the Academy and its Journal of Religious Leadership.

The ARL is immensely grateful to Robert for his service as editor. And we are very glad that he will continue to serve on the JRL board as he has from its founding.

Nourish Others. Nourish Yourself.