At the end of the 2025-2026 academic year, Professor S. Mark Heim, the Samuel Abbot Professor of Christian Theology at Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School (ANS), will retire from full-time faculty work.
Although he will continue in the immediate future to teach one course, this change is momentous in that Professor Heim is currently the longest-serving member of the ANS faculty and has been an anchoring force as Andover Newton has gone through radical change.
In both celebration and great appreciation of his remarkable career at our beloved institution, we aim to honor Professor Heim by establishing the S. Mark Heim Endowed Scholarship.
Celebrating a Career
Heim is a graduate of Amherst College, Andover Newton Theological School (1976) and the Boston College – Andover Newton Theological School joint doctoral program in systematic theology (1982). Prof. Heim has written extensively on issues of religious pluralism, atonement, and Christian ecumenism.
His books include Salvations: Truth and Difference in Theology; The Depth of the Riches: A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends (Theological Booksellers Theologos award for best academic book 2001); Saved from Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross; Crucified Wisdom: Christ and the Bodhisattva in Theological Reflection (winner of Frederick Streng award in Buddhist-Christian studies 2019) Monotheism and Forgiveness, and, most recently, Theology and Medicine in Conversation: How the Healing Happens (with Benjamin Doolittle).
Heim has also edited several volumes, including Faith to Creed: Ecumenical Perspectives on the Affirmation of the Apostolic Faith in the Fourth Century and Grounds for Understanding: Ecumenical Resources for Responses to Religious Pluralism.
Heim received a Henry Luce III Fellowship in Theology (2009-2010) and a Pew Evangelical Scholars’ Research Fellowship (1997-98). He is a member of the American Theological Society and served as co-chair of the comparative theology group in the American Academy of Religion. His teaching in science and religion earned a Templeton Foundation award in 1998 for one of the twelve outstanding courses in this area, and from 2014-2018, he was the primary investigator on an American Academy for the Advancement of Science grant devoted to integrating science into the theological curriculum.
An ordained American Baptist minister from Vermont, Heim served First Baptist Church in Franklin, New Hampshire, in the years between his MDiv and doctoral studies. Heim has both represented his denomination on the Faith and Order Commissions of the National Council and World Council of Churches and served on numerous ecumenical commissions and study groups, including the Christian –Muslim Relations Committee of the National Council of Churches. His teaching and research interests include comparative theology, theologies of religious pluralism, science and theology, Christology and atonement, and ecumenical ecclesiology.
Impact in New Haven
Since relocating with Andover Newton Theological School from Newton, MA to New Haven, CT; and becoming among the inaugural faculty members to teach at Andover Newton Seminary at YDS; Heim has become an influential member of the YDS faculty and Andover Newton Affiliate faculty.
Along with a colleague from the Yale Medical School, Dr. Benjamin Doolittle, he teaches an interdisciplinary course on theology and medicine. He also teaches courses such as Christ and the Boddhisatva and Theologies of Religious Pluralism. Heim chairs the YDS faculty’s Professional Studies Committee, which considers significant issues of student standing and related policies.
Heim advises students and attends ANS’ weekly worship experience, Emmaus, often presiding over communion in that service. His spouse, Melissa Lewis Heim, a retired history teacher whose doctoral studies focused on Christian missions, was among the founders of that worship service.
Honoring a Legacy
The S. Mark Heim Endowed Scholarship is a tribute to Prof. Heim’s remarkable career, indelible impact, and everlasting legacy at Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School. In accordance with Yale’s non-discrimination policies, the endowed scholarship fund will support one or more deserving seminary students. The fund will become fully endowed at $50,000, but our goal is to raise a total of $150,000, in honor of Prof. Heim.
Thanks to an incredibly generous donor, we have been awarded a matching gift that will double every donation, dollar-for-dollar, up to total of $50,000 that is made on or before June 30, 2026.
All gifts, no matter the amount, towards the scholarship are fully tax deductible and sincerely appreciated. Unless requested otherwise by the donor, ANS will keep Mark and Melissa Heim informed on all contributions towards the fund. Additionally, for leadership gifts of $10,000 or more, donors will receive additional stewardship benefits, including regular annual reports on the scholarship and its recipients. Please click here to make your gift today, or for more information, visit https://andovernewton.yale.edu/heimscholarship.
“I’m grateful the Heims were able to make the move from Newton to come here and build something new. Although I’ve known from the start that this transition would come, it’s a gut-punch nonetheless. It’s difficult to imagine Andover Newton at YDS without Mark and Melissa Heim.
I’m just glad that Mark will continue in his teaching ministry so that we need not say goodbye. We’ll walk with him as he sees what God has in store for his next chapter.”
