Stephanie Crumpton

Contact information:

Field of Study: Ministry/Practical Theology

Designation: Professor of Practical Theology, Director of the Trauma Healing Initiative

Email: scrumpton@mccormick.edu

Extension: 6329

Office: 516

Rev. Dr. Stephanie M. Crumpton is Professor of Practical Theology and Director of the Trauma Healing Initiative at McCormick Theological Seminary. Since joining the faculty in 2017, she has built a body of work at the intersection of research, teaching, community, and possibility, with particular attention to trauma, healing, resistance, and human flourishing.

In 2021, Dr. Crumpton led the grant-writing team that secured a $1 million Lilly Endowment Pathways for Tomorrow grant to launch McCormick’s Trauma Healing Initiative (THI). Through THI, she leads the formation of educators and learners in trauma-informed, healing-centered approaches to teaching and community engagement, advancing the initiative’s mission to reshape how institutions hold space for people who lead, learn, and heal in environments marked by inequity and harm.

A respected scholar and author, Dr. Crumpton’s latest book, We Gon’ Be Alright: Healing and Resistance in Black Movement Spaces, 2012–2021 (University of Arizona Press), traces nearly a decade of Black organizing to examine how activists drew upon care practices, reflection, creativity, and communal wisdom to navigate trauma and sustain resistance amid relentless sociopolitical pressure. The book is both a historical account and an invitation to consider how healing contributes to the durability of movements.

Her first book, A Womanist Pastoral Theology of Intimate and Cultural Violence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), explored womanist approaches to pastoral care in contexts of violence. Her emerging research turns toward questions of thriving and joy, continuing a scholarly trajectory concerned not only with how people survive harm, but with what makes healing, flourishing, and new possibilities possible.