Don Heinz received his MDiv and STM from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis and his PhD from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. After a brief stint in parish ministry, Heinz’s calling has been to the academic world, California State University, Chico. He served as professor of Religious Studies and then as dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. His teaching areas include religious ethics, sociology of religion, history of Christianity, death and dying. His book The Last Passage: Recovering a Death of Our Own was published by Oxford (1999), and his religious and cultural history Christmas: The Risk of Incarnation is forthcoming from Fortress Press. His manuscript “Re-discovering God in the Age of Obama” is looking for a home. Since their retirement from CSU Chico, Heinz and his wife Carolyn, a cultural anthropologist, have taught twice in the Semester at Sea program of the University of Virginia. During their teaching careers, the Heinzes have lived for extensive periods in London, Beijing, and Germany.
(The Heinzes were participants in the eight-hour PBS series “Colonial House” that showed in 2004. For four months in the summer of 2003 they were part of a 25-member cast that lived on the coast of Maine as if in a 1628 colony. Don was first the colony’s preacher and then its governor.)