Jeffrey F. Keuss

Jeff Keuss joined the Fuller faculty in 2025 as dean of the School of Mission and Theology and professor of theology and culture, bringing more than 30 years of teaching, research, leadership, and managerial experience in higher education, healthcare, and social services administration both in the US and UK. Prior to Fuller, Dr. Keuss held various roles as a professor, director of the University Scholars Honors Program, and associate dean of graduate studies for Seattle Pacific Seminary within Seattle Pacific University, and served as senior lecturer and director for the Centre of Literature, Theology, and the Arts at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. In his research and directorial oversight of the University of Glasgow interdisciplinary research center in the arts, Keuss provided leadership in budget development, grant writing, and curriculum coordination with faculty across the UK. He has served as PI for a number of grants including $2.75 million in grant acquisitions as part of a $55 million initiative from the Lilly Endowment for the development of Pivot NW Research, a nonprofit research and support institute seeking to research innovation models for the sake of engaging young adults in innovative social ventures with faith communities.

Keuss has published and actively researches as a theologian in areas of literature, theology, and arts with an eye to both the academy and the church. Recent monographs include Activism and the Literary Self in 20th and 21st Century Literature: Poetics of Justice (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025); Live the Questions: How Searching Shapes Our Convictions and Commitments (InterVarsity Press, 2019); A Poetics of Jesus: The Search for Christ in Nineteenth-Century Writing, New Critical Thinking in Theology Series, rev. ed. (Routledge, 2018); Blur: A New Paradigm for Understanding Youth Culture (HarperCollins/Zondervan, 2014); Your Neighbor’s Hymnal: What Popular Music Teaches Us about Faith, Hope and Love (Cascade Books, 2011); and Freedom of the Self: Kenosis, Cultural Identity and Mission at the Crossroads (Pickwick, 2010). He has contributed and edited a number of books, including Defiant Hope, Active Love: What Young Adults Are Seeking in Places of Work, Faith, and Community (Eerdmans, 2024); Paul Ricoeur and the Hope of Higher Education: The Just University, with Daniel Boscaljon (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020); The Sacred and the Profane: Contemporary Issues in Hermeneutics, rev. ed. (Routledge, 2017); and Paul Ricoeur and the Call to Interdisciplinarity Literature and Theology vol. 27, iss. 2 (Oxford University Press, 2013)

Keuss is the chair of the literature section for the International Society of Religion, Literature, and Culture; on the editorial board for the journal Literature and Theology (Oxford University Press); and founding chair of the Paul Ricoeur section of the American Academy of Religion. He is an ordained minister of the Word and Sacrament (PCUSA), having served several congregations in the US and in the Church of Scotland as assistant minister of the Glasgow Cathedral. He is married to Diana, an affiliate faculty member at Fuller, and has three adult daughters. He enjoys reading and collecting vintage jazz vinyl, being a L1 Crossfit trainer, backpacker and cyclist, and good coffee and conversation.