From First-Generation Student to Scholar: How Princeton Seminary Broadened Her Faith and Career

Casey Lynn Smith, PhD ’25, MTS ’17, was a first-generation college student at a small Christian university in Tennessee when her professors offered some advice that surprised her.

They told her she should go to graduate school.

“I think I said to them, ‘What’s that?’” Smith said.

Smith, homeschooled and raised in a conservative Pentecostal denomination, never imagined she’d become a history scholar. But she went on to earn two degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary, developing a distinctive research specialty that explores gender, sexuality, and the search for common ground in modern American Protestantism.

“I didn’t even think I was going to go to college,” said Smith. “I feel incredibly grateful that so many things aligned to allow me to get to this point.”

Earlier this year, after completing her post-doctoral fellowship at the Seminary, Smith landed a job that fits her passion for research into the American faith landscape. She is a grant program manager for the Louisville Institute, a Lily Endowment-funded research hub that connects church and academy through grants and fellowships.

Current projects supported through the Louisville Institute include deep dives into the impact of artificial intelligence on Christian workers, religious responses to the environmental crisis, and the legacies of Native American boarding schools.

“Their mission and values are aligned with my personal and professional values,” Smith said. “I’m excited to be part of an institution that’s doing meaningful work in the world.”

In her off-hours, meanwhile, she’ll continue doing her own meaningful work in the world: Researching and writing about American Protestantism and its encounters with complex and contentious issues in the world.

History tries to make sense of the past, not just who did it right and who did it wrong, but how we actually got to where we are, how we think of ourselves, and how we position ourselves. And I think interrogating that is important for the future of the church.

Smith grew up in Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, where her family worshipped in the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) Pentecostal movement. She attended college at the denomination’s flagship school, Lee University.

When she arrived on the campus in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, she felt excited but uncertain.

“I didn’t know what a major was,” she said. “I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing there.”

The courses she found most compelling were the ones she had to take for the university’s required religion minor. So, after a stint trying out pre-med classes, she declared herself a biblical and theological studies major.

Later, as she began considering graduate school, one of her faculty mentors suggested she look outside her Pentecostal tradition. She applied to Princeton Seminary, though it seemed worlds away — both in distance and in theological orientation.

“I’d never interacted in any meaningful way with mainline institutions or even mainline communities of Christians,” she said. “So, I thought, ‘This certainly fits the bill.’”

“When I got accepted, I thought, ‘Well, looks like I’m moving to New Jersey.”’

Today, she sees that decision as part of a broader evolution in her faith and intellectual life that had her moving away from conservative evangelicalism.

“Being at a Seminary where you could be deeply committed to your faith yet not hold to specific theological ideas was refreshing,” she said.

And at Princeton Seminary, she pursued the field that became her calling: history.
For Smith, history fulfills the basic human impulse to share stories and create meaning. Engaging with the history of religion, she adds, can foster humility at a time of deep divisions and polarizing conflicts.

“History tries to make sense of the past, not just who did it right and who did it wrong, but how we actually got to where we are, how we think of ourselves, and how we position ourselves,” she said. “And I think interrogating that is important for the future of the church.”

The future of the church was very much on Smith’s mind when, for her dissertation, she began researching the ecumenical movement that seeks to bring denominations together across their doctrinal differences. Focusing on the National Council of Churches, Smith explored how ecumenicism sought to make space for disparate views on issues such as reproductive rights and gender equity while preserving a commitment to Christian unity.

“You have a breadth of opinions, ideas, and commitments, but the one thing they have in common is that they want to stick together,” she said.

That approach offers hope at a time of deep division.

“I’m not saying that we should solely throw our trust into institutions, but in this time of polarization, institutions can provide safety for hearing a multiplicity of voices while remaining centered around the common good,” she said.

It’s a subject that will continue driving her own research and writing.

“I’m excited about its relevance for this moment, and the hope that is latent within it,” she said.