Danielle Tumminio Hansen

In 2010 Tumminio Hansen was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut and served in associate roles at churches in Massachusetts, namely Christ Church, Quincy, St Anne's-in-the-Fields, Lincoln, and the Church of Our Redeemer, Lexington.[4] She was also a chaplain at Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut and Groton School in Massachusetts.[1]

Tumminio Hansen taught courses at Yale University, Tufts University, the University of New Haven, and Central Connecticut State University, before being appointed assistant professor of pastoral theology at the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, in 2016.[6] In 2022 she became assistant professor of practical theology and spiritual care at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.[1][2]

Tumminio Hansen published the first comprehensive practical theology of infertility, reproductive loss, and surrogacy in 2019. Conceiving Family is an interdisciplinary study that utilizes ethnographic, feminist, womanist, philosophical and practical theological sources to argue for a vision of family defined by relationships and not biology. Tumminio Hansen proposes that surrogacy should be a mutual decision made between surrogate and intended family that supports the identity construction of each party and any resulting children. The conclusion of that book expands this model of reproductive surrogacy to non-reproductive realms in which individuals function as surrogates (proxies) for one another.

Tumminio Hansen believes that the terms most commonly used for sexual violations—including “rape” and “sexual assault”—fail to represent the scope of sexual harm, especially among marginalized populations and when harm fails to represent rape scripts and stereotypes. She proposes in “Absent a Word” that the linguistic gaps in matters of sexual violations instantiate concrete harm to victims.

In “Remembering Rape in Heaven,” Tumminio Hansen argues against Miroslav Volf’s proposal that trauma must be forgotten in the eschaton. She suggests that such a proposal raises serious concerns concerning victim epistemic credibility, divine beneficence, and the purpose of remembering the biblical corpus. Harkening to the work of Marilyn McCord Adams, Tumminio Hansen concludes that it is possible to hold an eschatological vision that preserves victim memory.

Tumminio Hansen is the author of God and Harry Potter at Yale: Teaching Faith and Fantasy Fiction in an Ivy League Classroom and was the instructor of the "Christian Theology and Harry Potter" seminar at Yale University from the spring of 2008 until 2013. She also repeated the course several times at Tufts University.[7] Tumminio Hansen has also presented material on the intersection between theology and the Harry Potter series at the Infinitus Symposium in Orlando, Florida in 2010,[8] the Portus Symposium in Dallas, Texas, in the summer of 2008,[9] and she chaired the panel on Harry Potter and Religion at the 2008 American Academy of Religion conference.[10] Her teaching has been praised by Harry Potter commentator John Granger on his Hogwarts Professor website.[11]

Tumminio Hansen stands in opposition to those in Christian circles who call the Harry Potter series heretical based upon the characters' use of witchcraft. She has said that in order to consider whether they truly are heretical, Christians must analyze whether the writings of J. K. Rowling violate a number of core theological doctrines, including sin, evil, sacrifice, and grace.[12] In 2008, she offered an innovative seminar at Yale in order to offer students an opportunity for sustained discussion about the status of the series. Over 90 students sought to enroll, and the course quickly gained international attention from media sources including CNN; in subsequent years, it became one of the university's most popular seminar offerings and inspired other courses across the country. She later used that sustained discussion as the basis for her first book, God and Harry Potter at Yale: Teaching Faith and Fantasy Fiction in an Ivy League Classroom. She has maintained that the books are not heretical and are in fact powerful tools for teaching theology to curious academics, seekers, and faithful Christians.[12]