For Immediate Release

Princeton Seminary Faculty Member Receives Top Religious Communication Award

Princeton, NJ, January 11, 2006– Kristin Saldine, minister of the chapel and associate director of the Joe R. Engle Institute of Preaching at Princeton Theological Seminary, has been chosen as the recipient of the 2005 Religious Communication Association Dissertation of the Year Award.

The award was presented to Saldine for her work, “Preaching God Visible: Geo-Rhetoric and the Theological Appropriation of Landscape Imagery in the Sermons of Jonathan Edwards.” Her research involved an interdisciplinary approach to homiletics that brings theoretical geography, visual rhetoric, and Reformed theology together to help preachers become more theologically aware of how the “world as it is” in everyday lived experience can be used analogically to render the gospel accessible in such a way that “divine things” are expressed. Saldine received the award at a Religious Communication Association banquet held in conjunction with the National Communication Association’s annual meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, in November. Two Princeton Seminary professors, Charles Bartow, who served as Saldine’s dissertation advisor, and Michael Brothers were also in attendance.

Bartow was excited about the choice of Saldine as the recipient of the award. “I have known and worked with Kristin since she attended seminary as a Master of Divinity student,” he said. “I was thrilled when she chose to stay as a Ph.D. candidate, and pleased to serve as her principal dissertation advisor. It is one of the most imaginative and constructive proposals I have read—a brilliant dissertation, and I was delighted to recommend her for the award and delighted that she received it. The scope of her work and the tightness of her argument and analysis are very commendable.”

Affiliated with the National Communication Association, the Religious Communication Association is an academic society founded in 1974 for the study of all aspects of public religious communication. It is an interfaith society dedicated to promoting dialogue among members of all diverse religious beliefs. It publishes The Journal of Communication and Religion, and, with the Academy of Homiletics, the journal Homiletic. Nearly all Protestant denominations are represented in the association, along with Roman Catholic, Jewish, and other faith traditions.