About TMC
Learn more about the heart behind the Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative from our faculty, staff, and alumni.
The TMC Initiative seeks the renewal of health care by bringing in-depth theological formation to the church’s health care practitioners. TMC creates opportunities for students, clergy, and health care practitioners to reimagine and to re-engage contemporary practices of health care in light of Christian tradition and the practices of Christian communities. We do this through formational programs, fellowship, public events and lectures, and a growing network of Christian health care workers.
TMC Formational Programs
TMC offers both residential and hybrid online formational programs at Duke Divinity School. These programs are open to current and future students in any of the health professions, as well as practicing clinicians and health care administrators.
Our residential fellowship program is aimed at current and future practitioners in any of the health professions, as well as those whose vocations involve full-time work in health-related contexts. The fellowship can be completed in 1 year (by completing the Certificate in Theology and Health Care (R-CTHC) or in 2 years (by completing the Master of Theological Studies (M.T.S.).
Our hybrid online programs are aimed at clinicians and others whose vocations involve full-time work in health-related contexts (including public health workers, hospital administrators, therapists, and counselors). Our hybrid online program can be completed in 1 year, through the Certificate in Theology and Health Care (H-CTHC). In this flexible hybrid format, students come together for two separate weeks in person at Duke University and then join for eight months of online learning.
Our dual degrees and programs with the Duke School of Medicine include 1-year and 2-year options with the Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) program; and an option that integrates with the Occupational Therapy Doctorate (O.T.D.) 3-year program.
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“I have experienced the TMC fellowship as a precious and undeserved gift. Even as an undergraduate student, I longed to connect my interest in becoming a physician and my christian faith. I was thrilled to come to Duke as a TMC fellow between my second and third years of medical school. Before, I felt as if I was pursuing these questions alone. Now I have a community of friends pursuing them alongside me.”
News & Features
June 2, 2026
The Linacre Quarterly
Authored by TMC alumni Hima Bindu Thota, Clark Howell, and John Dortch, alongside TMC affiliate faculty member Ryan Antiel, this paper reimagines surgical practice through the lens of the Sabbath, offering a theological counter to medicine’s fixation on efficiency. It invites clinicians to recover a sense of sacred time and moral formation that restores presence, dignity, and the practice of healing.
May 22, 2026
Church Life Journal
In this essay, TMC co-director Warren Kinghorn critiques the language of “burnout,” arguing that it reflects a mechanistic view of clinicians shaped by systems of efficiency and productivity. Drawing on Aquinas, he instead commends a recovery of the contemplative life as essential for sustaining the work of health care and reorienting it toward love, wonder, and the pursuit of the good.
August 27, 2025
Jordan DeVeaux, M.Div., '25, drafted a job description for a role that didn’t exist, and it led her to a year’s work with Lawndale Christian Health Center. Learn how she was shaped by the opportunity.