Bio

The Reverend Doctor Laura A. Smit is Professor of Theology at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, MI, where she has been teaching since 1999.  She is also the Assistant Pastor of Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church (ECO) in Grand Rapids. She is ordained as minister of the Word in both ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians and in the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRCNA).

Dr. Smit is a graduate of Calvin College, Calvin Theological Seminary, and Boston University. She was ordained in the PC(USA) in 1989 and served as the pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Clayton, New Jersey for six years before going to B.U. for a Ph.D. in medieval philosophy and theological aesthetics.  Her dissertation was on aesthetic epistemology in the theology of Bonaventure.

She is the author of the commentary on the book of Judges in the Brazos Theological Commentary series (2018) and of Loves Me, Loves Me Not: The Ethics of Unrequited Love (2005), a book that features interviews with many college students about their experiences of romantic rejection.  Other books to which she has contributed chapters can be found on the “Books” page.

From 2003 to 2008, Smit served as Dean of the Chapel at Calvin College, and in connection with that position she was ordained as a minister in the Christian Reformed Church, while retaining her PC(USA) ordination.  In the summer of 2012, Rev. Smit was dismissed from the PC(USA) to ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.  She has been a member of the national Theology Task Force for ECO since August 2011.  She is a member of ECO’s Great Lakes Presbytery and serves on the Preparation for Ministry team.  She is also an active member of Evangelicals and Catholics Together.

Her current research interests are focused on the theology of beauty in the Reformed tradition and the thought of C. S. Lewis, particularly on Lewis as a medievalist. She also continues to do work on Bonaventure.