Treveccan Stories: Tragedy in the Life of Faith

Nazarene theologian and alumnus Al Truesdale’s latest book explores the reality of suffering and the hope found through the incarnate Christ.

As a lifelong minister and seminary professor, Al Truesdale has written more than a dozen books and spent his career teaching the philosophy of religion and Christian ethics. But there is one topic he’s been hesitant to face head on—tragedy.

Marketing-Headshot-Truesdale-2“I’ve known I had to address it for quite some time, but didn’t know best how to do it,” Truesdale says. “It’s a difficult topic.”

So difficult, in fact, that many theologians avoid it. For example, he points to Karl Barth’s masterful work “Church Dogmatics.” Throughout its many volumes, Truesdale says he recalls Barth only mentioning tragedy once.

Tragedy was front and center in Truedale’s earliest days of ministry. Fresh out of college after earning his undergraduate degree in religion from Trevecca in 1964, he was just weeks into working as a young pastor when a family in his church lost their oldest son to suicide. Soon after, a young soldier from his congregation—a family’s only son—was killed in the Vietnam War.