Donald Heinz, PhD

Department of Religious Studies
College of Humanities and Fine Arts
1975–2017

Donald “Don” Heinz is an exemplary administrator, teacher, and scholar who imbued the campus, and the reading public through his writings, with a deeper appreciation of religion’s role in society.

Heinz joined the Department of Religious Studies faculty in 1975 already an ordained minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Five years later he was department chair. In 1985, Heinz was named dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, a position he would hold for 16 years.

Heinz was a fierce and witty advocate for liberal arts education during his tenure as dean, hosting annual celebrations of arts and humanities, promoting lectures and performances, and initiating international and study abroad programs such as the London Semester and Beijing Semester. He was lauded for introducing speakers and performers with well-crafted, memorable remarks, befitting his scholarship and ministerial background.

During and after his deanship, Heinz taught courses on the history of Christian thought, religious ethics, the sociology of religion, and dying, death, and the afterlife. He was the recipient of Chico State’s Outstanding Teacher Award for the 1983–84 academic year, and retired in 2017.

Heinz is the author of numerous well regarded and influential books and articles, including The Last Passage: Recovering a Death of Our Own and Christmas: Festival of Incarnation. His most recent books are After Trump: Achieving a New Social Gospel and Matthew 25 Christianity: Redeeming Church and Society. Heinz is currently finishing work on Composing a Christian Life: Writing the Chapters of Jesus’ Life into Our Own and has recently published “Covid and Religion,” an article for the journal Religion. 

“As a scholar, Don's been an insightful and productive interpreter of religion and its ongoing relevance in modern secular society,” said Bruce Grelle, emeritus faculty in the Comparative Religion and Humanities Department. “As dean, he demonstrated a deep and abiding commitment to the increasingly quaint idea that an essential purpose of the University is to cultivate the life of the mind.”

Heinz works in the area of Christian social ethics and the sociology of religion. He is active inside and outside Faith Lutheran Church in Chico as a pastor and theologian committed to Christian presence in the public square. In February 2023 he wrote a guest commentary on that subject for the Chico News & Review.