Focus - Winter 2012

OCUS f Winter 2012

Inside: 14 A Home for Methodism in America —and for Me 22 Emancipation from Homesickness 28 The Journey to a Heav’n-Rescued Land 32 To the Hills

Finding A Home in Faith By wisdom a house is built . . .

Explorations of the concept of a spiritual home.

Fill this chair with love and support.

focus Boston University School of Theology Winter 2012 Dean MARY ELIZABETH MOORE Director of Development & Alumni Relations TED KARPF (’74) Alumni Relations Officer JACLYN K. JONES (’06) Coordinator of Communications PIPPA R. MPUNZWANA Editor ANDREW THURSTON Contributing Writers PATRICK KENNEDY (COM’04) STEPHEN PROTHERO CORINNE STEINBRENNER (COM’06) Designers SHOLA FRIEDENSOHN OWEN EDWARDS Produced by Boston University Creative Services Opinions expressed in Focus do not necessarily reflect the views of Boston University.

Make your contribution to secure the future of the H ARRELL F. B ECK C HAIR OF H EBREW B IBLE S TUDIES .

The goal is to raise $525,000 to fully endow this historic position.

Please recycle In keeping with Boston University’s commitment to sustainability, this publication is printed on FSC-certified paper and 10 percent postconsumer waste.

To play your part, contact Ted Karpf at 617-353-2348 or tkarpf@bu.edu.

0212 9040008851

Photo by Cydney Scott

“Prosper our Handiwork” Professor Dana Robert formally sits in the Truman Doud Collins Chair at a ceremony marking its inauguration during the 2011 STH matriculation.

On October 19, 1912, T. D. Collins, “manufacturer of lumber, boats and barges,” pledged $100,000 to found a department of missions at the School of Theology.

Nearly 100 years later, his legacy has been fortified with the full endowment of a chair in his name.

The Truman Doud Collins Chair of World Christianity & Mission was funded with support from the Collins family and other donors, including a matching gift from Thomas A. Sears (’59). The chair’s holder is Professor Dana L. Robert, codirector of the Center for Global Christianity & Mission.

Online Extra You can read more about Truman Collins and the chair in X his name at www.bu.edu/cgcm/newsletter.

Table of Contents DEAN’S MESSAGE

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FEATURES A Radical for All The alum behind a community center that provides lifelines to many

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After the Long Silence A minister who is transgender works for a more accepting world

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Getting in Shape for Worship Improving the health of Methodism— and of congregations

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An African slash American Success Story Two cultures join to build one church

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Social Change x 2 Combining theology and social work for a ministry of community interaction

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Front Cover Photo of the original 1948 architectural blueprint of Marsh Chapel

by Vernon Doucette. Blueprint courtesy of the School of Theology Historical Collections, STH Archives, Boston University.

JOURNAL: FINDING A HOME IN FAITH A Home for Methodism in America 14 —and for Me Take a personal journey through the history of the nation’s first Methodist seminary.

By Christopher H. Evans (’86), Professor of History of Christianity and Methodist Studies Emancipation from Homesickness Can the church be a homeland to those denied a claim to one by slavery?

By Gregory E. Thomas (’01), Minister in Residence

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The Journey to a Heav’n-Rescued Land When it comes to the disenfranchised, the U.S. falls short on its promises.

By LaTrelle Miller Easterling (’04)

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To the Hills 32 In facing the finitude of life in this world, we might find true freedom.

By Walter Earl Fluker (GRS’88), Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership A Playdate with the Early Church 40 Ancient homes help uncover new perspectives on worship in the ancient world.

By Meredith E. Hoxie Schol (’11) ALSO IN THIS ISSUE STH News

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Reading List: Alum and Faculty Books

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Faculty Interview: Unprotected Texts, the Bible’s Contradictions about Sex

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Thank You, Donors

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Dean’s message REFLECTING ON HOME

Photo by Cydney Scott

BY MARY ELIZABETH MOORE

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“Home is where the heart is.” “There is no place like home.” These are commonplace phrases, yet many children in the United States and around the world have no homes. They live in cars or on the street, moving as need arises. For some people, home is where bad memories lie or where hurt and violence have been perpetrated. Such emotion-laden and conflicted images of “home” often stir even stronger longing. People yearn for the community and security that the image of home promises. What a fitting image for the 2012 issue of Focus—a year when political debates, church conferences, and social movements raise questions that lie at the heart of human existence and the very survival of our planet.

The ancient Jewish people were nomads; they wandered in the wilderness searching for home. Jesus was born into a family, but his first home was a borrowed stable and he was buried in a borrowed tomb. Christians have continued to traverse the Earth, making home in many cultures and communities, shaped by the uniqueness and concerns of each one. Religion itself is a home-seeking, home-making way of life: people of faith orient themselves around the Holy, and they tend other people and all of creation as sacred gifts. In Christian tradition, such home-tending honors the inclusive

family of God’s children—the family honored by Jesus when he called God “Abba” or “Daddy,” and when he extended his own circle to include outcasts.

The world we share is fragile and complex. During the past year, I have walked with family and friends, students and colleagues, through terrible losses—tragic deaths, life-threatening and life-taking illnesses, loss of jobs, loss of direction, and lapses of judgment with tragic consequences. In the face of such fragility, my prayer list grows. My sense of life’s complexities also grows. I become increasingly aware of the burdens and hidden responsibilities people carry and the diversities they navigate daily. As I write this reflection, I am sitting on an international flight, and everyone in my row speaks a different primary language; yet, we are held together by being human, with human passions and concerns, and we live together on our fragile planet.

Fragility is a theme that holds the stories of this issue together. In a fragile creation, some pathbreaking leaders reveal the power of making home for themselves and others. Virgia Phoenix (’61) gives care to seniors and others in New York, making a home for people who long to be loved, well nourished, and fully integrated into a lively community. David Weekley (’82) has traveled his unique path of gender

identification, seeking to be faithful to the person God has called him to be and to minister with others who want to be faithful as they travel a gender path that many do not understand or accept. Bishop Sally Dyck (CAS’76, STH’78) wrestles with the challenges of making home within human institutions, and the challenges “People yearn for the community and of Earth care. security that the image of home Williamson Taylor (’84, promises. What a fitting image for the ’89) seeks to 2012 issue of Focus—a year when political live in the “slash” between debates, church conferences, and social African and movements raise questions that lie at the American, heart of human existence and the very serving the Ghanaian survival of our planet.”

Anglican Church while also pastoring an unlikely church in a Bronx mall. Finally, Katie Cole draws strength from her childhood Presbyterian church home. When she graduates in May, Katie will carry a Master of Divinity and Master of Social Work.

Her dream is to link local church ministry with community service. These pathbreakers are all committed to loving home, making home, reshaping home, and building home for others.

The Focus journal articles offer many clues for homemaking that respond to human longings: Christopher Evans

(’86) recalls the homemaking of early Methodists in the United States; Gregory Thomas (’01) calls attention to the cultural home of African Americans; Meredith Hoxie Schol (’11) awakens us to the critical role of home in the early church; LaTrelle Miller Easterling (’04) describes the quality of life that emerges when people forge their faith in the crucible of slavery and live by hope; Walter Fluker (GRS’88) also points to hope—the hope of facing finitude and finding freedom.

In my interview research with young people, I continually hear teenagers and young adults express a deep longing for home, whether it is having strong, supportive relationships with parents and siblings or rooting themselves in friendships and a sense of place. Young people who do experience home in such ways speak eagerly about what it means to them. Young people who are lacking such experiences long for them; they long for their families and churches to provide them with home and to support their individual journeys toward home. Their stories echo Nelle Morton’s The Journey Is Home, in which Morton recognizes that home is not one place; it is a lifelong journey with unexpected stops and discoveries along the way.

Life is fragile, and human beings are limited; however, the human calling is to face those limits and go about the business of making Home! X

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FEATURE

A Radical for All THIS ALUM RUNS A COMMUNITY CENTER THAT PROVIDES LIFELINES TO MANY.

Photo: Times Union, Albany, NY. Used By Permission

BY PATRICK L. KENNEDY

Virgia Phoenix helping out at the Everly Cromwell Community Center.

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“I was already a radical,” says Virgia Phoenix (’61). “But coming to Boston and studying under Dr. [Allan Knight] Chalmers reinforced it.”

Since her student days at the School of Theology, studying under the former mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59), Phoenix has made a career out of caring for others. With a deep capacity for compassion and a knack for problem solving, she has spent decades helping the aged, feeding the hungry, and encouraging her fellow Methodists to put their principles into practice.

What made Phoenix a “radical” to begin with? “I grew up in Mississippi!

That’s what really motivated me,” she says of her childhood in the Jim Crow South. “It might be my family background. My mother never backed down from anybody. Even though we lived in Mississippi, she was involved in voter registration and activism. My parents always encouraged us to stand up for our rights.”

In former professor of homiletics Chalmers, Phoenix found another role model and “one of my favorite professors.” The onetime National Association for the Advancement of Colored People president “was very involved in working for social justice, civil rights, and changes in social attitudes. A lot of that influenced me. All of the training I got under him really helped me in terms of being engaged in

a lot of the issues I became engaged in, like peace and justice.”

ADVOCATE FOR SENIORS

Following graduation from STH, Phoenix worked as a director of religious education at various churches and camps in and around Boston and New York.

She took a maternity leave to have and raise her daughter, but quickly “got tired of being a stay-at-home mom.”

When she was asked to help open a senior center in Harlem, New York, Phoenix jumped at the chance. “And from then on, I was involved in the field of aging.” She ended up working for Senior Services of Albany for 21 years, arranging transportation and medical care, weatherizing homes, and even chasing down employers who owed back pay to their former housekeepers.

“Working with senior citizens is really very rewarding,” says Phoenix. “When you help them resolve an issue, you know immediately that you’ve done something to make life better for them.”

For half of that time, Phoenix also served as a wellness coordinator for the county, running health education programs, blood pressure screenings, and flu clinics.

Phoenix didn’t give up on religious education, though. She is now a peace with justice coordinator for the Upper New York Conference of the United Methodist Church. She speaks at churches to urge Methodists to follow the UMC’s social principles,

which include respect for all of God’s creation and an obligation to seek peace and justice in all matters—economic, social, and environmental.

“It’s about empowering them to be more vocal when it comes to political issues,” says Phoenix.

A FAIR BREAK IN LIFE

However, the bulk of her time today is spent running the Everly Cromwell Community Center, located in an Albany multigenerational public housing development that includes many elderly.

“It’s basically a drop-in center where we serve three meals a week, and we hold a dinner once a month,” she explains. “People can come in and use our computers. We have meetings, book signings, gospel brunches, fashion shows, dance groups, book clubs. We observe African American

“When it comes to food, I know the ones who are vegetarian, who are allergic to seafood, who don’t like chicken. Sometimes people say to me, ‘Well, Miss Virgie, just let ’em go and have whatever there is to have!

Don’t be trying to specialize.’ But I’m concerned about everybody’s issues.”

—Virgia Phoenix

History Month. We’ve also had GED classes in the past. We do voter education and registration, and we try to help people get themselves into the job market, which is difficult in many cases

because a lot of people come in with a history of drug abuse or incarceration.”

“Phoenix prepares and serves food and does the lion’s share of the cleanup, for residents and the local community at large,” wrote the Albany Times Union in 2007. She “accepts donations to run the food program, which is free to the hungry, but admits she spends her own money to keep it going.”

The article also noted that diners at the Everly eat with silverware and on china. “I try not to use disposables,” Phoenix tells Focus. “It makes you feel better when you’re eating on real dishes, using real forks, spoons, and knives. The other reason is, disposables cost too much!”

The city pays Phoenix to work parttime, but she generally ends up working a full-time schedule. “It gives me a reason to get up in the morning,” she says. “I’m just not the kind of person who can sit at home and do nothing.”

What she enjoys most is meeting people’s needs, she says. “When it comes to food, I know the ones who are vegetarian, who are allergic to seafood, who don’t like chicken.

Sometimes people say to me, ‘Well, Miss Virgie, just let ’em go and have whatever there is to have! Don’t be trying to specialize.’ But I’m concerned about everybody’s issues.”

Concern for others—if there’s a thread that runs through Phoenix’s career, that’s it, she reflects. “Caring for people, and making sure they get a fair break in life.”

Her mother would be proud. In fact, she is proud. “She’s still alive,” Phoenix says of the woman who taught her to stick up for herself and her community.

“She’s 107 years old.” X

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FEATURE

After the Long Silence THE ONLY CURRENTLY SERVING METHODIST MINISTER WHO IS OPENLY TRANSGENDER, DAVID WEEKLEY IS WORKING TO MAKE THE WORLD— AND HIS CHURCH—MORE ACCEPTING AND INCLUSIVE. Photo courtesy of David Weekley

BY CORINNE STEINBRENNER

David Weekley

David Weekley will forever regard August 30, 2009, as a turning point in his life. On that Sunday morning in Portland, Oregon, he rose before his congregation and nervously began a sermon that would reveal something he had never shared from the pulpit in all his 28 years as a United Methodist minister.

“From my earliest memory,” Weekley (’82) told his congregants, “I saw myself as a boy . . . . My friends were the other boys on the street. We played baseball, kick-the-can, football, and other games.

We built clubhouses by the frog pond.”

But once he entered public school, he said, it became clear that, when the world looked at him, “they saw a little girl.”

The revelation drew a few gasps and many stunned expressions, but by the end of the sermon, Weekley’s parishioners were supportively applauding their pastor, knowing it must have taken incredible courage to speak openly of his identity as a transgender man.

THROUGH THE WILDERNESS

A year and a half later, in early 2011, Weekley published a book, In from the Wilderness (Wipf and Stock Publishers), to tell his story in more detail. In the book, he makes brief mention of his Ohio childhood and writes of the few supportive adults who helped him weather a “truly horrific adolescence.” As a college student in the early 1970s, Weekley met regularly 6 boston university

with a medical team at the Cleveland Metropolitan Hospital and began the succession of hormone therapies and surgeries that would transform his voice, hair, and body. With the help of a lawyer, he legally changed his gender and name, choosing David because it means “beloved of God.” The early years of Weekley’s transformation were difficult; despite feeling at peace for the first time in his life, he writes, he also felt alienated and alone. Having always been a believer, he began searching for a Christian community, joined a United Methodist congregation, and soon felt an irresistible call to ministry. In 1980, he moved to Boston to begin studies at the School of Theology, hoping to find a safe and welcoming environment at the School that had once been home to the civil rights pioneers of a few decades before. He was disappointed to find the Boston University atmosphere of the early 1980s too conservative for him to feel safe sharing his transgender identity. But he loved his Old Testament studies with Professor Harrell Beck (’45, GRS’54), his Christian social ethics class with Dean Emeritus Walter Muelder (STH’30, GRS’33, Hon.’73), and—most especially—his course on the history of Methodism. It was in this class, he writes in his book, that he truly grasped the theology of Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, and “first consciously realized that it was no coincidence that I was a United Methodist.” It was also at BU that Weekley met and married his first wife.

After graduation and ordination, Weekley moved to Idaho for his first appointment as a pastor among the region’s farmers and dairymen. “It was a blessing and privilege to live and work with these congregations,” he writes.

“There were entire periods of time, sometimes weeks or even months, when I forgot my anxieties of being a transgender man.” With the help of a fertility clinic, he and his wife had two children, but their strained marriage eventually ended in divorce. While later serving a congregation in Oregon, Weekley met Deborah, whom he married in 1996, becoming a stepfather to her three children. Weekley’s book begins and ends with his and Deborah’s 2009 decision to tell his life story, which they had only recently shared with their children, to his church and the world. Weekley spoke with his bishop, who confirmed that, while gay and lesbian people are barred from Methodist ministry, the church’s Book of Discipline says nothing of transgender people. He then began to prepare his sermon, confident that “kairos, God’s perfect time,” had finally come.

LIVING OPENLY

Today, Weekley continues to believe the timing of his coming out was “very definitely” right, despite the uncertainty it introduced to his pastoral career. Several months after his momentous and wellreceived sermon, Weekley sensed pockets of discord in his Portland congregation and, at the advice of his district supervisor, requested a transfer. He now leads two tiny Portland congregations—one with 50 members, the other with just 12—and earns half his previous salary. A colleague has argued, unsuccessfully, for the revocation of his pastoral credentials.

Weekley’s close friends and family, however, remain steadfastly supportive, and he’s enjoying new opportunities to advocate for and educate about transgender people—accepting invitations to deliver guest lectures on college campuses, speak at conferences on transgender health, and answer questions from parents of transgender children.

“I’ve met a lot of wonderful people,” he says, “and had some opportunities to preach about my story—not in United Methodist churches, but in other denominations.” He adds, “I always believed part of my ministry would be to do this. There’ve been no regrets.”

Remaining in the Methodist Church has been a struggle, Weekley says, “because I disagree with our current policies regarding LGBTQ people.” He recently signed a pledge to perform samesex unions despite the church’s disapproval. He’s making no plans, however, to leave for another denomination. “My own experiences and spiritual journey feel so parallel in many ways to John Wesley’s—the talk about the strange warming of the heart and prevenient grace—that Methodism feels like the place I belong,” he says, “and so I continue to stay and try to help bring change.”

Weekley sees encouraging signs within the church, among them STH Dean Mary Elizabeth Moore’s willingness to write an endorsement for his book. As the Methodist Church approaches its 2012 General Conference, Weekley says he’s hoping for a “watershed event” and looks forward to a serious conversation about amending the Methodist Book of Discipline to welcome all people—regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity—into the full life of the church. X

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FEATURE

Getting in Shape for Worship WHEN BISHOP SALLY DYCK TALKS ABOUT IMPROVING THE HEALTH OF THE CHURCH, SHE MEANS WATCHING ITS WAISTLINE, TOO.

Photo: Mike DuBose, United Methodist Communications

BY ANDREW THURSTON

Sally Dyck

Not everyone, Sally Dyck jokingly admits, wants to hear what she has to say. It makes some uncomfortable. For them, it’s just too personal. They don’t, frankly, want a bishop telling them what to eat for dinner.

And then there are the potential after-dinner conversations: about the Bible and the environment, the church and gay marriage, and (closer to home) life at the School of Theology in the 1970s. None is easy and all, as Dyck (CAS’76, STH’78) points out when talking about the first two topics, have perhaps been avoided for too long.

Dyck has been a bishop in the Minnesota conference since 2004 and is full of practical ideas to improve the physical and spiritual health of the Methodist Church.

CONFLICTS AND CONVERSATIONS

In the mid- to late-1970s, STH was, says Dyck, a “very chaotic and conflicted” place. She recalls a time of high faculty turnover and constant questions about the School’s future direction: “I think we probably learned some coping skills and leadership skills—and maybe a little more tolerance for conflict and chaos. My positive spin is it prepared me very well for the church. In the last 35 years in the church, there have been those kinds of times.”

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The latest test of lessons learned in Boston came in the summer of 2011, when a pastor in Minnesota was called out in the press for blessing same-sex unions. Dyck kept her responsibility to investigate, but hopes in the year of a General Conference, the Methodist Church can remember “that we are not of one mind on this issue.”

And, she adds, it’s also “very important to the people we’re not reaching.” She calls them the “nones,” people who check ‘none’ when asked their religious affiliation; Dyck says many grew up in the church, but have become disillusioned by a failure to engage on subjects such as homosexuality and the environment.

“I really think what conversations we’re having as Church matter more than local churches, or the denominations, take into account,” she says. “A lot of times at local levels, they think, ‘If we have just the right music, then we’ll attract younger people.’ It might help, but I don’t think that’s what the true issue is. Are we willing to have conversations, and to be open to one another in those conversations, about things that sincerely matter to others?”

She counts her niece, an environmental science teacher in a California public school, as one of the “nones.”

The two recently coauthored a book on theology and ecology, A Hopeful Earth: Faith, Science, and the Message of Jesus, to “help people think about some of the scientific aspects of the

environmental crisis, as well as how it’s connected to Jesus.” Dyck says her niece no longer attends church but “has basic beliefs and strong feelings about what she understands Jesus to say” about our care of the planet: “He presented a lifestyle and a way of living that is very compatible with—and challenges us to have—a better relationship with the Earth.”

And, while acknowledging that not everyone sees being green as “a mission of the church,” Dyck reemphasizes that the elusive “generation that the “To suggest you should do some things church is desperate to attract” that would provide for a healthier body certainly does: in order to be a good spiritual leader is a “If we paid a little more attenlittle tough for some people [to hear].” tion to even the —Sally Dyck conversation about the connection between Jesus and the care of the Earth, we would relate to a different group of people than is presently attending many of our churches.”

THE THEOLOGY OF DINNER

And since we’re on difficult subjects, there’s also the theology of dinner.

When it comes to physical health, Dyck practices what she preaches. As she writes on her blog, “I run every day for my physical and spiritual well-being.”

But her belief that “body, mind, and spirit are intimately connected” doesn’t sit well with everyone in her flock.

“I find it a tough sell to some clergy and to people who don’t want to be told how to live their individual lives,” she says. “To suggest you should do

some things that would provide for a healthier body in order to be a good spiritual leader is a little tough for some people [to hear].”

For her, it goes back to a piece of scripture that, as she deftly notes, many haven’t thought about since they were teenagers: “Corinthians says that our bodies are the temple of the Lord,” she says.

More popular is her advice on maintaining a balanced worship diet.

A few years back, Dyck coined the “Spiritual Pyramid,” to give people “some guidelines around how to live out their spiritual lives.” It isn’t about eating more vegetables, but ensuring, for instance, that devotion to Sunday school teaching doesn’t mean neglect of private prayer.

She’s also the author of A Faithful Heart: Daily Guide for Joyful Living, a book of weekly challenges. (Week 1: “As you find yourself in an ordinary place or surrounding, practice seeing the presence of God. Recall what you see or sense, and journal about it or share the experience with a loved one . . . ”) The book continues a theme—not just of raising difficult topics, but of finding practical ways to deal with them. As Dyck notes when talking about her role as a director of the Foundation for United Methodist Communications, which developed the Rethink Church campaign, “This is a time when every business, industry, and institution needs to rethink what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. The church is no exception.”

Don’t expect Dyck to hold back her suggestions, no matter how (literally) unpalatable some might find them. X

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FEATURE

An African slash American Success Story

Photo courtesy of Williamson Taylor

WILLIAMSON TAYLOR HAS BROUGHT TOGETHER AFRICAN AND AMERICAN EXPERIENCES TO BUILD A CHURCH THAT BRIDGES TWO CULTURES.

Williamson Taylor

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BY ANDREW THURSTON

A SUITCASE AND 100 BUCKS

The future for this slice of Americana looked bleak. With just twenty parishioners, the church in the mall was struggling. Williamson Taylor (’84, ’89), 4,300 miles from his homeland and newly installed as the church’s pastor, was going to have his work cut out for him.

Taylor, born and raised in Freetown, Sierra Leone, stood in front of his sparse new congregation at St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church in New York City’s Bronx, and told them not to despair. They did at least have a sanctuary, even if many in the borough didn’t know it was there.

“I come from Africa,” he remembers telling them, “where we sometimes worship God under a tree because we do not have a building; it’s not the building that is the church, it’s the people, the living, breathing church.”

A fine sentiment, but with only a handful people, Taylor still didn’t have much of a church.

That was 2002. Today, Taylor, also an Episcopal canon for congregational development, can sometimes welcome more than 200 people—even after borrowing chairs, many still end up leaning against walls. With the Episcopal Church seeing a 14 percent slide in active members in a similar period, how did Taylor increase his flock so dramatically? His is both an African and an American success story.

When Taylor showed up for class at the School of Theology in the early 1980s, he had one suitcase, $100, and nowhere to live. His wife and two children were still in Sierra Leone. It wasn’t a promising start. What he did have, however, was tuition support and the help of the longtime director of admissions, Earl Beane (CAS’63; STH’67, ’68).

Beane told him “never mind” about the money and set him up with college accommodation. “Boston University did not put tuition before my registration— it just welcomed me,” says Taylor.

Eventually, his wife, then his children, would join him.

At BU, Taylor, already an ordained priest in Sierra Leone, began to learn how he would have to adapt to serve God on this side of the Atlantic. He recalls an especially formative year as a chaplain at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital: “Visiting the people in the wards at Mass General opened my eyes to new ways of doing ministry,” he says. “I came to realize that being a chaplain doesn’t just mean visiting someone in a hospital room and not knowing the background of the pain and suffering they had gone through.”

Still, when Taylor started working in the Episcopal Church in the U.S., he instinctively looked for connections to the Anglican Church of his homeland.

“Sierra Leone was a British colony for 150 years,” he says. “When I came over here and was serving, I found that this country at one time also had a lot of British influence; I found some similarities that I was able to tap into, work with.”

But, while the prayers and services may have had a common ancestor, much, too, was different. In his current role as a canon for congregational development, Taylor often mentors new priests—many making the same journey he once took from African Anglicanism to American Episcopalianism. He shares with them the lessons of his life.

“As an Anglican priest, you are the be-all and end-all of your parish, you call the shots. Not so in the Episcopal Church. Here, in the Episcopal Church, you work with the vestry who are lay people. You don’t call the shots; you work with them.”

A PRODUCT OF TWO NATIONS

A naturalized American, Taylor won’t completely cut his ties to the continent of his birth. He was recently made a canon commissary—a kind of ambassador—for the Ghanaian Anglican Church and is still a member of his old church in Freetown, sending his annual membership fees, along with robes and other gifts. “We keep doing those things,” he says, “to keep abreast with our part of the world while we are here.” The ‘while’ suggests Taylor might rush back at any moment, but that seems a distant prospect. Early in his post-BU career, he turned down a bishopric in Sierra Leone to cement his family’s place in America. That tentative ‘while’ might be habit; it might just be a reminder that he’s a product of two nations.

“I don’t take every culture and say, ‘Yes, this is the one,’ and throw mine away,” he says. “I still do my traditional African things; I still do the American things.

“I keep reminding my children, who have become more American than Americans, that at the root of it all, we are Africans and that there are African Americans here who would like to learn about the African culture from us. I have not forgotten Africa, my homeland.”

And so back to the church in a Bronx mall. It’s here that Taylor’s African and American experiences are coming together to build something special. First, the American part of the success story: “I started what I call aggressive advertising,” says Taylor of boosting his congregation. He discovered that a local newspaper would give a regular, free, 500-word slot to local religious groups, so he encouraged youth members to “write pieces just to tell the church’s story.” He also introduced a welcome packet and buddy system for new members to “make them feel at home.” Word began to spread, but there was an African dimension to the campaign, too. He had given his young authors some cultural advice. “I told them, ‘Don’t just say, Episcopal; people from the Caribbean islands, who are sometimes in the majority in black churches, don’t know that word— you’re going to put Anglican.’”

St. Joseph’s became, says Taylor, an “Episcopal slash Anglican” church.

And this church—with 200 people and a building, there’s no doubt it is one now—has a priest at its helm perfectly placed to bridge the two cultures, African slash American Williamson Taylor. X

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FEATURE

Social Change

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A DUAL DEGREE PROGRAM IN THEOLOGY AND SOCIAL WORK IS PREPARING STUDENT KATIE COLE FOR A MINISTRY THAT ISN’T CONFINED WITHIN CHURCH WALLS.

Photo by Kirsten French

BY CORINNE STEINBRENNER At the age of 17—after being ordained an elder in her Presbyterian congregation—Katie Cole decided to become a minister. “I knew I wanted to go to seminary. I knew I wanted to go into ministry. That part was clear.” But as Katie Cole working with the Appalachia Service Project. the North Carolina native progressed through her undergraduate studies, she often got the sense that her plan was incomplete. “I felt there was another component I needed,” says Cole, “but I wasn’t sure what that was.”

During her second summer working for “Ministry can be this beautiful the Appalachia tapestry of social engagement and Service Project (ASP), a nonsocial work and social justice, closely profit that helps interwoven with worship life. I’ve seen repair the homes of low-income that parish ministry doesn’t have to be families in rural confined within parish walls.”

Appalachia, Cole — Katie Cole discovered the missing piece. She learned that ASP’s then executive director, Susan Crow, was both an ordained Methodist minister and a trained social worker. “So I talked to her,” says Cole, “and she said that having those two degrees”—a master of divinity (MDiv) and a master of social work (MSW)—“really served her well.” Crow said she believed her dual education allowed her to accomplish 12 b o s t o n u n i v e r s i t y

things she couldn’t have done with theology or social work training alone.

The brief conversation convinced Cole to add social work studies to her seminary plans.

POWER OF TWO

Today, Cole (’12, SSW’12) is completing her fourth and final year of BU’s dual MDiv/MSW program. She’s among the more than 20 master’s and doctoral students currently enrolled in programs administered jointly by the School of Theology and BU’s School of Social Work, a school that emphasizes social and economic justice and empowerment of oppressed groups of people.

The School of Social Work allows MSW students to concentrate in either clinical social work, which focuses on individuals and families, or macro social work, which emphasizes program development and community organizing. While STH doctoral students tend to choose the clinical track to complement their studies in pastoral care, more and more master’s students “are pursuing the macro track because of their social justice leanings,” says STH Director of Admissions Anastasia Kidd (’04). Cole, a macro social work student, is part of that growing trend.

REAL PEOPLE, REAL ISSUES

As she looks ahead to leading her own congregation, Cole is grateful for the practical skills her MSW classes are

Top and bottom photos courtesy of Katie Cole; middle photo by Kyle Beaulieu

Katie Cole in California (top) and South Africa (middle) on trips supported by the STH Springboard Fund, and playing autoharp during training for the Appalachia Service Project.

adding to the academic and spiritual training she receives at STH. “Learning all of the planning and program development skills, community organizing, strategic management, and human service management will make me a much more effective executor of all my theological tasks,” she says. Even more important, she says, the social work program provides endless opportunity “to confront real people—to deal with real issues of real, live people.”

For her adult psychopathology class, for example, Cole attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and then wrote a paper about how the experience challenged her assumptions about people in recovery. A community organizing assignment sent her out into a South Boston neighborhood, talking to residents about their lives and needs and the resources available to them. Combining theological training with this constant community interaction, says Cole, has profoundly altered the way she views the world—its evils, and the power of God’s grace to overcome them.

Cole served her first of three internships with Critical MASS, an organization that seeks to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities in Massachusetts. She’s also examined case studies of people living with mental illness and worked with those recovering from addiction. These experiences, she says, have taught her that “evil can be manifest in really insidious ways—in racism and through stigma.” The experiences have also bolstered her faith.

“Seeing the scope of brokenness and fracture,” she says, “I’ve been struck by the incredible strength with which people can live—and the grace.” She’s now

convinced, she says, that there’s no such thing as a hopeless case: “There are hard cases, but they’re not hopeless.”

A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE

Cole calls her second internship—a year with the Fourth Presbyterian Church in South Boston—a “beautiful intersection of theology and social work.” In addition to its worship and music services, Fourth Presbyterian offers after-school programs for neighborhood children, a food pantry, and Al-Anon meetings, and the congregation involves itself in local politics through the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO). Serving at this “lovely, lively” church has helped Cole envision a career that combines her longstanding aspirations for a parish ministry with her growing passion for social change. (Cole is currently completing her third internship with GBIO.) There was a time, she says, when she feared ministry would be too narrow a field for someone with her energy and broad interests. “I thought ministry was just being the pastor of a church and dealing with what’s contained inside the church.” Her time at Fourth Presbyterian has expanded her thinking. “I’ve seen in this congregation that ministry can be this beautiful tapestry of social engagement and social work and social justice, closely interwoven with worship life. I’ve seen that parish ministry doesn’t have to be confined within church walls.”

Despite the time and hard work such a church demands of its pastor, Cole says she hopes to someday lead a congregation like the one at Fourth Presbyterian. Her dual training in theology and social work has surely provided her the tools to handle the challenge. X

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J O UR N A L

a home for methodism in america—and for me

BY CHRISTOPHER H. EVANS (’86), PROFESSOR OF HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY AND METHODIST STUDIES

An architectural blueprint of Marsh Chapel from the 1940s; the original is held in the STH archives.

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1. An informative history on the early years of the School can be found in Richard Morgan Cameron, Boston University School of Theology, 1839–1968 (Boston University School of Theology, Boston, 1968).

and shape their calling. For an historian of the School of Theology, the story begins with childhood ball games.

I grew up in a suburb of Syracuse, New York, where my next-door neighbor was Bishop W. Ralph Ward of what was then known as the New York West area of the United Methodist Church.

Even though my parents kept referring to him formally as “the bishop,” my memories of Ward and his wife, Arleen, were of two kind and tolerant neighbors, who put up with the ways that my brother and I used their backyard as either an end zone for touch football or an outfield for softball. It wasn’t until several years later, when I became reacquainted with the Wards in their retirement, that I grasped the significance of their ministries, and the connection that each of them had as alums of Boston University (Ralph graduating in 1932 and 1935; Arleen in 1931).

What led me to become a seminarian at BU School of Theology in the mid1980s was, in large part, a simple fact: the majority of people who influenced and nurtured my call to ministry were alums of the School. My work since, as a local church pastor, theological educator, and scholar, owes a great deal to my own uncovering of the STH legacy, a legacy that has shaped my call and vocation, just as it did for people like the Wards before me and those who attend the School today.

The oldest United Methodist theological seminary in the United States and the founding school of Boston University, STH traces its beginnings back to 1839 when a fledgling biblical institute opened

its doors in rural Vermont.1 Today, it is one of the premier graduate theological schools in North America, with a national and international student base representing numerous theological perspectives, and a community of faith and learning made up of diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural voices.

Perhaps what most characterizes the School’s reputation is a heritage of social justice that earned it the nickname, “the School of the Prophets.” Over the years, that legacy has been rooted in persons like Bishop Francis J. McConnell (1897, 1911; GRS 1899; Hon. 1929), one of the most prominent figures associated with the Protestant social gospel of the early twentieth century (and one of those who helped STH once claim the

About the Author

Christopher H. Evans is the author and editor of several books, including The Faith of Fifty Million: Baseball, Religion, and American Culture; The Kingdom Is Always but Coming: A Life of Walter Rauschenbusch; and Liberalism without Illusions: Renewing an American Christian Tradition. His teaching and research interests include American religion and ministry studies, as well as the history of Christianity.

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Photo by Pippa Mpunzwana

Photo by Vernon Doucette.

Blueprint courtesy of the School of Theology Historical Collections, STH Archives, Boston University.

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merica’s first Methodist seminary has helped many find

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majority of elected United Methodist bishops as alums); Georgia Harkness (SRE’20; GRS’20, ’23; Hon.’38), the first woman to hold a faculty chair in an American theological seminary and the major figure behind the 1956 General Conference decision to open the doors of ordination to women; Howard Thurman (Hon.’67), former dean of BU’s Marsh Chapel and STH professor; and, of course, Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59), the most visionary social prophet of the twentieth century.

Yet these individuals represent only the tip of a heritage that is deep and expansive. For me, the STH historical legacy is embodied by two interconnected components: critical intellectual engagement and a commitment to serve the church and world.

Borden Parker Bowne

William Fairfield Warren

Anna Howard Shaw

Georgia Harkness

In the years leading up to the establishment of STH, known in 1839 as the Newbury Biblical Institute, the vast majority of Methodist leaders took a dim view of formal theological education, believing that too much book learning would quench the passion of faith and douse the emotional fires of revivalism.

That STH flourished owes much to the vision and persistence of John Dempster (1794–1863). An itinerant clergyman (and like most Methodist clergy of the day, self-educated), Dempster served numerous churches in New York and New England, and became one of the first Methodist missionaries in South America.

At a time when the Methodist Episcopal Church frowned on the formal education of clergy, Dempster argued that the church needed to affirm the importance of heartfelt piety, but also disciplined 16 b o s t o n u n i v e r s i t y

minds that could equip laity to uncover the sacred truths within the depths of scripture and the reservoirs of tradition.

Dempster practiced what he preached.

After the Newbury Institute moved to Concord, New Hampshire, in 1847, he assumed the role of full-time faculty member and became the school’s chief fundraiser. Dempster’s peripatetic nature eventually led him to the Midwest where he was critical to securing funding for Garrett Biblical Institute (today, GarrettEvangelical Theological Seminary).

After another move for the seminary, this time from Concord to Boston, the foundation planted by Dempster would be embodied in the careers of William Fairfield Warren (1833–1929), longtime dean of STH and the first president of Boston University, and

Bowne, Warren, and Shaw images from BU Photography; Harkness photo from Boston University Gotlieb Archival Research Center

DISCIPLINED MINDS

2. For information on the contributions of Oliver and Shaw, see Jean Miller Schmidt, Grace Sufficient: A History of Women in American Methodism, 1760–1968 (Abingdon, Nashville, 1999).

3. Zion’s Herald (December 11, 1929): 1573.

4. Mitchell’s story is told in his memoir, For the Benefit of My Creditors (Beacon Press, Boston, 1922).

then Boston University is the shadow Hinckley Mitchell (1846–1920), who of Dr. Warren.”3 served as professor of Old Testament from 1883 to 1905. Warren was part Warren’s career was devoted to critiof the first generation of Americans cal academic inquiry and piety. Professor who pursued advanced graduate studMitchell was an early faculty member ies in Europe, and he championed a who showed that same commitment. strong commitment to the life of the Like Warren, Mitchell received gradumind, while being a vigorous supporter ate training in Germany, and was part of of the church’s global mission. He was the first wave of American biblical studies also an early leader of the ecumenical scholars in the late nineteenth century to movement, an advocate teach students methods for interreligious engageof biblical higher critiThe STH historical ment, and a prolific hymn cism. Although he was a legacy is embodied by writer. Warren was forcareful and meticulous mally inaugurated as BU’s scholar, Mitchell also two interconnected first president in 1873 and stressed hands-on expericomponents: served in that capacity ence for his students, often until 1903. encouraging them to take critical intellectual Part of Warren’s desire to the streets of Boston for engagement and a at BU’s founding was inner-city mission work to open the University’s (frequently modeling these commitment to serve doors to women. Early experiences after Wesleyan the church and world. in its history, a small class meetings). group of women studied Mitchell was caught at STH, an important up in a wave of heresy milestone in the church’s quest toward hunting that impacted many churches inclusivity. In 1876, one of these pioat the end of the nineteenth century. neers, Anna Oliver, became the first Ultimately, he was put on trial by woman to graduate from a theological his annual conference for teaching seminary in the United States. Another doctrines contrary to the Methodist alum, Anna Howard Shaw (1878, Episcopal Church. While exonerated, MED 1886), became the first woman the church’s bishops, who had authority ordained by a Methodist denominaat the time to approve faculty appointtion in America (by the Methodist ments at Methodist schools, refused Protestant Church in 1880) and a major in 1905 to reappoint Mitchell (at the advocate for women’s suffrage and 1908 General Conference, this policy equal rights in church and society.2 was dropped from the Book of Discipline).

Mitchell embodied a cherished principle Warren continued working at the within United Methodism today— School until 1920, retiring at the ripe academic freedom. His legacy of free young age of 87. Upon his death in intellectual inquiry remains strong today 1929, the Methodist periodical Zion’s as part of the teaching and learning enviHerald remarked, “If an institution is but the lengthened shadow of one man, ronment at the School of Theology.4 school of theology

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toral degrees from BU, and then went In the twentieth century, STH expanded on to a lengthy career as a professor, theologian, and major leader of the ecuits course offerings to stress not only the menical movement. Teaching mostly rudiments of scripture and theology, philosophy of religion early in her but emerging disciplines in the praccareer, she experienced a turnaround in tice of ministry. In 1919, the School of 1937 when her father, on his deathbed, Religious Education and Social Service implored her to “write more about Jesus was established at BU with many crossChrist.” Harkness made good on fulfillappointments to STH. This department ing her father’s dying wish and many played a critical role in the training of of her books were written with a lay women (and men) for careers as religious educators, academicians, and home audience in mind, reflecting her own sense that her mission was to help others and foreign missionaries. As an histoexplore the rich contours rian, I would be remiss of the Christian life.6 if I didn’t mention the importance of historical As a church leader, “Unless we know studies within the STH Harkness was a strong what our Christian ethos, epitomized in the advocate both for early twentieth century Christian unity and intermessage is we shall

by George Croft Cell religious understanding, not know whether (1904, GRS’08). He was recognizing that the future one of the first scholars of Christianity was as a to have a Christian to undertake extensive global religion. While she movement. Unless critical studies on the acknowledged the seriwe have a clear life and thought of John ousness of the theologiWesley, helping to piocal conversations taking sense of its relation neer the development of place in the western world to non-Christian Wesley studies as a criti(at the time dominated cal academic field.5 by the perspectives of faiths we shall not Karl Barth and Reinhold For me, so many know which way Niebuhr), she underaspects of STH’s unique stood that the future of heritage of critical thinkto move.”

Christianity lay with the ing and earnest engage—Georgia Harkness younger churches from ment meet in the life of Africa, Asia, and Latin one of its most distinAmerica. Reflecting on the 1938 Madras guished alums: Georgia Harkness. While International Missionary Conference, certainly a critical figure in United Harkness made an assertion that well Methodism for the inclusion of women, sums up an aspect of the STH ethos Harkness’s career was also marked by today: “Unless we know what our social activism in the areas of racial and Christian message is we shall not know economic justice and peace activism. whether to have a Christian movement.

Born in rural upstate New York, Harkness received her master’s and doc- Unless we have a clear sense of its relaEMERGING DISCIPLINES

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5. See George Croft Cell, The Rediscovery of John Wesley (Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1935).

6. For a comprehensive review of Harkness’s life, see Rosemary S. Keller, Georgia Harkness: For Such a Time as This (Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1992).

Photos by BU Photography

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Howard Thurman

Edgar S. Brightman

Walter George Muelder

7. Rebekah Miles, ed., Georgia Harkness: The Remaking of a Liberal Theologian (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 2010), 125.

8. For a recent analysis of Boston Personalism’s impact on twentiethcentury theology and ethics, see Gary J. Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology: Idealism, Realism, and Modernity, 1900– 1950 (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 2003), 286–355, and Dorrien, Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition (Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, 2008), 306–323.

9. Quoted in Rufus Burrows, Jr., Personalism: A Critical Introduction (Chalice Press, St. Louis, 1999), 2.

tion to non-Christian faiths we shall not know which way to move. Unless we can defend our faith on other than subjective grounds we shall not be able to present it with the conviction that convinces others.”7 THE QUESTION BEHIND THE QUESTION

Central to the intellectual heritage of people like Georgia Harkness has been STH’s connection to the legacy of Boston Personalism. Associated with Professor Borden Parker Bowne and several of his students, such as Albert C. Knudson (GRS 1900) and Edgar S. Brightman (1910, GRS’12), personalism became one of the dominant traditions in American theology during the first

half of the twentieth century.8 It not only had strong intellectual and theoretical aspects, but, as seen in the career of Harkness, a distinctive pastoral side.

Professor Robert Neville comments that part of what characterized personalism’s appeal was not simply its intellectual legacy, but the way that scholars could enjoy “direct contact with the living members of the tradition, usually at Boston University.”9 In many ways, Neville’s assertion was true of my experience as a student. During my studies, I certainly became aware of several aspects of the School’s legacy that I’ve outlined so far—its intellectual creativity, its commitment to serve the church through ordained and lay ministries, and the fact that many bishops (like Ward) were alums. While a student, my own encounter with a major part of the historical ethos of the School came through my association with one of its former deans, Walter George Muelder (’30, GRS’33, Hon.’73).

When I first met Muelder, I was vaguely aware of his status as dean emeritus and as a major figure in Methodism, ecumenism, personalism, and Christian social ethics. The full extent of Muelder’s legacy, however, didn’t really hit me until the spring of 1985 when, over several weeks, I interviewed him as part of an oral history project (those interviews are now archived in the STH library). I must confess that for most of those interviews, I was completely in awe and perhaps a bit afraid. As a young seminarian, I was struggling to find my voice and trying to clarify my calling. Yet, what quickly became apparent was that Muelder was more interested in telling the story of the School of Theology than talking about

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his own life. In the time I spent with him, mission in recent decades to serve the through those interviews and in his classes, church and the world. After World War II, STH was a pioneer in the pasI developed a deep appreciation for the theological positions he took and the intel- toral counseling movement, developing lectual rigor in which he engaged many of interdisciplinary educational partnerships the perplexing questions facing Christianity throughout BU. Today, the School, despite many changes, is still characterin the modern world. ized by a desire to innovate, marked One of the most significant aspects of by such distinguished current faculty Muelder’s contribution was the nummembers as Professor of Hebrew Bible ber of African American students who Katheryn Pfisterer Darr; Truman Collins pursued graduate studies at the School Professor of World Christianity and during his tenure as dean. In one period History of Mission Dana between 1953 and 1968, Robert; E. Stanley Jones BU and STH granted Like all institutions, Professor of Evangelism more doctorates to Bryan Stone; Associate African Americans in STH is, and always Professor of Practical the field of social ethics has been, a treasure Theology and Spiritual than any other school Formation Claire in the country. Among in an earthen Wolfteich; and our curthe African American vessel, and part rent dean, Mary Elizabeth scholars and leaders who Moore. Our faculty has received doctorates from of understanding helped shape STH as an BU during the period the past of our international leader in sevof Muelder’s deanship eral fields, including bibliwere C. Eric Lincoln institution is that cal studies, history, and (’60, GRS’60, SED’60, even in its so-called practical theology.

Hon.’91) and Martin golden age it wasn’t Luther King, Jr.10 Muelder always stressed COMING HOME— perfect—but it has to his students that part AGAIN always remained of the task of intellectual Since I graduated from inquiry was to “uncover STH in 1986, many aspects a treasure. the question behind the of my life have led me full question.” This always circle back to BU. When I meant for me that the life of faith was never was ordained a few weeks after my graduaabout easy or stock answers, but digging tion, one of the bishops who laid his hands deep into the mysteries of our personal and on me was my former next-door neighcommunal lives, seeking ways that we could bor, Ralph Ward. The sense of BU School broaden our understanding of Christianity, of Theology as home took on new meanintellectually and as living faith. ing for me in the fall of 2010 when I was Muelder’s assertion has certainly privileged to join its faculty as Professor been a cornerstone for how the School of History of Christianity and Methodist has attempted to broaden its reach and Studies. My life and ministry have taken 20 b o s t o n u n i v e r s i t y

10. See Paul Deats, Jr., ed., Toward a Discipline of Social Ethics: Essays in Honor of Walter George Muelder (Boston University Press, Boston, 1972), 1–17.

Photos by BU Photography

Mary Elizabeth Moore

Katheryn Pfisterer Darr

Dana Robert

Claire Wolfteich

many wonderful and unexpected turns, but the sense that the STH legacy remains close at hand has never been far from me.

The reality of coming home to STH has been part of a wonderful personal and vocational journey, yet it has also been a process that began long before I first matriculated in the fall of 1983. It has been a journey that has led me to find my voice and my calling, and made me acutely aware that all of us who have some connection to this School today are part of a “cloud of witnesses” to that firm foundation of faith and learning.

Many who have come of age in my generation have witnessed seismic changes in the ministerial landscape. Much conversation within the United Methodist Church (and other mainline denominations) keeps returning to an almost apocalyptic vision of the church’s future. As an historian, I always remind students of one fundamental fact—the history of Christianity

tells a story that has never been about a golden age; it is, however, a group of stories of how people have sought to make sense of the Christian message in the midst of different contexts.

Like all institutions, STH is, and always has been, a treasure in an earthen vessel, and part of understanding the past of our institution is that even in its socalled golden age it wasn’t perfect—but it has always remained a treasure. I am excited to be in a place that is wrestling with the shape of theological education in the twenty-first century. We have responded with a visionary new curriculum and a faculty that represents a diverse range of disciplines, talents, and commitments in service to the academy, the church, and the world. Today, the School is a much different place from the one known by Dempster, Warren, Harkness, and Muelder, but the mission remains as vital as ever.

It feels splendid to be home again! X

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J O UR N A L

emancipation from homesickness

BY GREGORY E. THOMAS (’01), MINISTER IN RESIDENCE

An African American pastor wonders if the church can restore a sense of home to their descendants.

Photo courtesy of Radius Images

When I think of home I think of a place where there’s love overflowing I wish I was home I wish I was back there with the things I been knowing.

—“Home” from The Wiz (1975)

1. There is some irony in this being a predominately German audience, as one of the most cited examples of this sense of yearning is that experienced, according to Leroy Rouner, by the Jewish Diaspora. Heimat is still a topic of great debate in Germany—is it a positive remembrance or a heark– ening back to Nazi nationalism?

For Rouner’s characterization concerning the yearning for a place called home, see L. S. Rouner, ed., The Longing for Home (Boston University Studies in Philosophy and Religion, University of Notre Dame Press, Indiana, 1996).

A choir and minister in an African American church.

During the Kirchentag, the German Evangelical Church Congress, of 2003, there was a session entitled Sehnsucht nach religioser Heimat (loosely, yearning for a religious home). It was my introduction to a public expression of the German concept of Heimat, a word with no true English translation, but one that encompasses homeland, origins, and early experiences. “Many people,” the moderator reflected, noting the size of the crowd, “are interested in Heimat.”

According to two of the presenters, theologians Hartmut Raguse and Paul M. Zulehner, home is perhaps the object of one of humankind’s deepest yearnings. There is a fear intrinsic to the feeling of being away from home, a sense that you are missing something. Exploring that feeling is, they reasoned, the ultimate journey into one’s self—and a deeply ambiguous one for Germans, for this longing for self can ultimately leave the “foreign,” those who are different, out.1 The most salient point for me, however, was the strong sense that home was more than a place and, at the same time, simply a place.

FINDING A VOID

A few years before that congress, I was challenged in a graduate comparative theology class at the School of Theology to consider the relation between cultural origins and religion.

As I shared in a dialogue on beginnings with fellow students, it became apparent to me that there was a deep void, from which I could not find sufficient definition or comparison. As an African American, I had difficulty with the questions of home and being.

What was home? Where was it and how did it look and feel? Could it be described and did that description indicate not only a place, but a perspective or horizon? While others referenced the ethnic otherness of their family trees, this was unilater-

About the Author

Gregory E. Thomas is the minister in residence for the BU Center for Practical Theology. He is also pastor at the Calvary Baptist Church, Haverhill, Massachusetts, a position he has held for more than 20 years.

Thomas has taught Baptist polity and black church history in the U.S., and religion in American culture at GoetheUniversität, Frankfurt, Germany.

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he slave trade tore millions from the land of their birth.

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also the experience of a particular place. ally done in connection to a particular And, therefore, the attributes of home can place (Irish and Ireland; French and vary depending upon personal experience.

French Canada). There was no speciHome is a good experience for some; ficity that I could speak or even dream of. The horrors of slavery are not to be home is a horrible experience for others.

I am reminded, too, that similar underdismissed, but it was not the primary standings of home are not always pleasissue I began to deal with in that class. ant for all people. The smells that evoke If I had memories and reflections of joyous remembrances for one may be the home, and beginnings, were they less reminder of horrible times for another. legitimate than those of others? I then thought of the theological implications, And, in speaking of home, one also raises the notion of being without a home, of of the importance of cultural beginhomelessness. nings and context. To dismiss my cultural memory would be to negate my notion of self.

THE PLACE OF HOME I did have reflections of home and So what is a home? The primary asserthey were intertwined with a sense of tions are easy to imagine. It is not simply God and place. Home was literal and bricks and mortar, yet it is with a physialso metaphorical, always representing cal structure that we so often identify safety and warmth, even when the heat home. It is not a neighborhood, but we of our house was off. find that our life patTo be home repreterns are frequently sented a familiarity and shaped by the neighEven the negative certainty; it provided borhoods we call connotations of home instructions in everyday home. living. A great part of Presbyterian mincan still yield some sense the instruction included ister and theologian of who we are. And the Sunday mornings at Frederick Buechner church, where my imagines that there is negation may, in fact, father, the deacon, prono place like home: allow for a more creative, fessed, with others, the it is “where you hang goodness of God and your hat, or where intuitive, and imaginative the necessity of love. you hang yourself.�2 notion of home.

Our church home and To Buechner, it is a our homes were, as a place, this word home, result, places of hospibut it is a place like tality, history, and cultural memory. no other.3 However humble or garish a Sometimes we define home simply as place may be, when it is thought of as a place that one can return to in order to home, it has the power to beckon one be renewed, refreshed, and made whole back to some beginning, some identity. from the ravages of the world. It is a safe Home is a particular place. place. And, if it is not, it is the imagined Even the negative connotations of place of safety and protection. Home is home can still yield some sense of who 24 b o s t o n u n i v e r s i t y

2. Frederick Buechner, The Longing for Home: Recollections and Reflections (Harper, San Francisco, 1996).

3. Ibid.

Slaves being loaded into a ship.

Steel engraving, 1881.

we are. And the negation may, in fact, allow for a more creative, intuitive, and imaginative notion of home. It may not be memories that are evoked, but a conception of how home might look, feel, and smell; an intuited sense of what one would have home be.

Educators have known for years that a student’s growth in language arts can be greatly enhanced by curricular approaches that foster atypical everyday experiences. Giving materially deprived children experiences they might not have on a normal basis can nurture and promote writing and other lan-

guage arts skills. The wealth of a place or experience seemingly does not lie only in financial worth, but in varieties of human experience. And each has a particularity of context that makes it a special place, unlike any other.

CHURCH AND IDENTITY

Buechner’s recollections about his early childhood home and how it gave him a unique perspective on how to provide a home for his own children are very telling. His vivid and somewhat lyrical rendering pinpoints an important aspect for my current dissertation research: the

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Photo by Linda Haas for BU Photography

study and observation of the theological notions, ideas, and cues of home and how the church can become a home.

What homes provide, more than anything else, are the furnishings of self.

Katherine Platt notes that home is “the penultimate place of experience, second only to the body.”4 This place of experience is a connecting of the past, present, and future, according to Platt. It is a valuable assertion and one that is help26 b o s t o n u n i v e r s i t y

ful in my sense of the importance of the place of the church, as it represents not only a present reality, but a symbolic and literal place that, like home, preserves and identifies. For those of the African American Diaspora, the church holds great importance for identity.

Walter Brueggemann, in Cadences of Home, indicates that to lose home is to lose a “structured, reliable” (my italics) system of meaning. Exile from

Every year, STH celebrates the graduation of students from the African Diaspora with the Sacred Rites of Passage ceremony.

4. K. Platt, “Places of Experience and the Experience of Place,” pp. 112-127, in Rouner, ed., The Longing for Home, op. cit.

many diverse peoples and cultures highlights how the institution of slavery reverberates in America’s present.

As I discovered, the personality traits believed to be part of a cultural milieu, which might be traced back to places like Ireland or Germany, are not available to me.

Slavery deprived people who survived the horrific trip of a sense of who they were, where they came from, and who their gods were.

I believe that African Americans, despite the estrangement of slavery, have a “homeland,” one that is cultural, not geographical. It is centered in religion and spirituality. Hence, the words, “my church

A HOMELAND IN RELIGION

home,” are powerful and meaningful.

5. Walter Brueggemann, Cadences of Home: Preaching among Exiles (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 1997).

6. Buechner, op. cit.

7. Peter Blickle, Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland (Camden House, Rochester, 2002).

8. Buechner, op. cit.

home may not only be geographical, but social, moral, and cultural.5 Buechner helps us to simplify our understanding of this estrangement: “The longing for home is so universal a form of longing that there is even a special word for it, which is of course homesickness, and . . . a form of this homesickness known as nostalgia or longing for the past as home” can be a powerful emotional, psychological, political, and sociological core of cultural conception.6 A German concept, Heimweh, likewise indicates a deep longing because of homesickness; it is considered almost a disease.7 A great part of an identification of self is an understanding of where one has come from and how that shapes thoughts and beliefs. As an African American, I cannot identify a genealogical homeland with any certainty, except to say that the continent of Africa holds some key to my sense of being. That Africa is a continent with

As I sat in that class at STH, it occurred to me that I needed to see this from a different horizon. I began to think upon all that made me, in my estimation, the person that I was, or had hoped to be. I thought about the importance of God, not only in my home, but also within its cultural context—my neighborhood.

My existence was punctuated with cultural cues that said I was a person who had come from a special background.

It was a religious background, a spiritual background: “Where do you look for the home you long for if not to the irrecoverable past?”8 I believe that African Americans, despite the estrangement of slavery, have a “homeland,” one that is cultural, not geographical.

It is centered in religion and spirituality. Hence, the words, “my church home,” are powerful and meaningful.

We all must be in expectation of a home; this is not a temporal understanding, but a gift of revelation, of trust that there is something beyond this earth, which inspires us to live in and engage with the world with a selfworth derived from a belief and faith in God and justice. X

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the journey to a heav’n-rescued land

BY LATRELLE MILLER EASTERLING (’04)

1. Maya Angelou, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (Vintage, New York, 1991).

Crowds gather on the National Mall for a presidential inauguration.

says a Boston-based minister. When it comes to the disenfranchised, America still has lessons to learn from Jesus’ treatment of a Canaanite woman.

It was a day like no other. A day that seemed perhaps impossible and certainly improbable. Some stood in amazement, having believed they would not witness it in their lifetimes. From the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, across the great expanse of the National Mall to the steps of the Capitol, the sons of former slaves and the daughters of former slave owners stood together in rapturous expectation. The wealthy, the middle class, and the poor stood with tears cascading down their faces. Sanitation workers, doctors, military personnel, lawyers, students, and clergy stood in the crisp air awaiting the moment. A moment 389 years in the making was finally here. Those who watched at home were similarly captivated; for one gleaming moment, it appeared our nation was finally living up to its creed.

As Barack Hussein Obama raised his right hand and took the oath of office to become the forty-fourth president of the United States of America, a seismic shift took place. Some born within the geography of the U.S. felt for the first time that they were no longer resident aliens, but full citizens—they were really at home. As poet and author Maya Angelou writes, “The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not

be questioned.”1 The election of an African American to become the leader of the free world made the disenfranchised of all races feel more at home.

And yet, as the days have unfolded, that feeling has slowly eroded. Although Obama was elected, he has too often been summarily rejected and utterly disrespected. Racism and prejudice continue to rear their ugly heads: congressmen are verbally assaulted with racial epithets and homophobic slurs on the steps of that same Capitol; the President is disrespected with derogatory references from a past some thought we had finally buried; African

About the Author Photo courtesy of Union United Methodist Church

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and of the free and home of the brave?” Not yet,

LaTrelle Miller Easterling is pastor of Union United Methodist Church, Boston; she’s the first female pastor in the church’s nearly 200-year history. Before answering the call to ministry, Easterling had a successful legal career, specializing in workers’ compensation for the city of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Easterling is also the author of a number of short stories and poems.

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Americans are once again depicted as hominids. For some, the dream has again become a nightmare and that quintessential question is asked, “O Lord—how long?” (Psalm 6:3b).

HEALED FROM THE DEMON OF PREJUDICE

In Matthew 15, Jesus offers a roadside tutorial on the ethical superiority of the will of God, teaching the disciples that it is not subject to tradition, custom, or the religious rules of man. Then, as if on cue, Jesus is confronted with a situation that will test the legitimacy of the lesson.

A Canaanite woman approaches Jesus asking for mercy because her daughter is sick and in need of healing. The significance of this encounter is lost if we fail to appreciate the social dynamics of the period. Jews believed that Samaritans were ceremonially unclean, and customarily refrained from such interactions; bitter hostilities existed between the two groups. Women, too, were relegated to second-class citizenship. The Canaanite woman represents otherness.2 Jesus is at first silent: perhaps reflecting upon his former teaching and its present implications; perhaps marveling at the boldness of this woman to flaunt custom and press her case; perhaps weighing his options. The disciples, disquieted by the silence, urge Jesus to dismiss her and bring an end to her disruptions. Instead, Jesus engages the woman and responds indirectly, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24).

Rather than be deterred, the woman presses her case further. Assuming a posture of humility and continuing her liturgical language, she again requests mercy.

Jesus now engages her harshly and directly.

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He rebuffs her request by positing that food intended for children should not be given to dogs. Determined, the woman presses her case even further and retorts that even after children have eaten, masters allow the dogs to consume the crumbs.

The woman in this story is not a victim. She is self-aware and self-sustained.

She is cognizant of her worth and comfortable in her status. She is not a prisoner of the opinions, beliefs, biases, and attitudes of her neighbors. She knows who she is. In fact, she maintains the moral authority in the story, using it as the basis for her persistence—and it is credited to her as faith. She challenges Jesus’ refusal to be merciful as a moral failure to fully embody the gospel he preaches. Can’t we hear her unspoken utterances? I know who you are; I have heard of your miracles and your teachings; I am aware of your power and your grace. What you are offering is too good, too virtuous, too powerful, too liberating, and too merciful to be given only to an elect few. You may not even realize it yet, but what you are offering is meant for all. This unnamed protagonist confronts the dissonance between what Jesus has preached and what is being practiced. Her persistence caused an exegetical earthquake that shook the very foundation of the covenant. Most interpretations focus exclusively on the daughter’s healing, but the Jews were healed, too. They were healed from the demons of prejudice, exclusion, and hate.

FREEDOM AND OPPRESSION

The U.S. was founded on the principle that justice is an inherent right. It professes to be one nation under God, offering liberty and justice for all. Yet, for many, it remains the land of inequity and injustice, the land of discrimina-

2. See Iwan Russell-Jones in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A, vol. 3, eds. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 2011), p. 358.

3. Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1978), p. 81.

tion and bias, the land of exclusion and endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. denial; the land that many call home A faith strengthened through a theoldoes not offer safe sanctuary. As there ogy of liberation has assured us that nothwas for the Canaanite woman, there is ing can separate us from the love of God. a dissonance for some between what A faith tested through the storms of is preached and what is practiced. life has taught us that trouble won’t America preaches liberty and justice last forever. for all, but the reality is still limitation A faith rooted in the resurrecand injustice for too many. tion assures us that we are victors and This dissonance is not new. It not victims. African existed as colonists Americans can continue fought for their freeA faith rooted in the to sing the Lord’s song dom, while deprivresurrection assures in a strange land because ing it of others. It our faith empowers us to existed as the foundus that we are victors keep pressing our case. ing fathers estaband not victims.

The ideals of freedom, lished a nation on African Americans can equality, justice, and Christian principles, liberty that have framed while engaging in the continue to sing the this country’s constituunholy practice of Lord’s song in a strange tion are larger than the slavery. It was present geographical boundaries as white Christians land because our faith of a nation, and too pretook breaks from empowers us to keep cious for an elect few. church services to The U.S. lives beneath engage in hangings pressing our case. its power and privilege and then return to if it allows a minority to their pews. This dissilence the faithful witness of the many. sonance existed when the very symbol The privileged also live in bondage; of salvation was burned on lawns to bondage to the traditions of racism, terrorize and brutalize. It persists today sexism, ageism, classism, and homophowith an economic, social, political, medical, educational, and digital divide. bia. The U.S. is still becoming the great nation it professes to be. However, its When will the dissonance dissipate?

How have African Americans been able fate is written in history, and no apparatus, be it political, social, or theologito exist in the dual reality of freedom cal, will be able to preclude it. As with and oppression? How have we continancient Israel, the end has already been ued to be at home in an inhospitable written, even though the powerful land? Faith. attempt to deny it.3 When this is truly A faith born in the crucible of slavery became the driving force behind a the land of the free, it will indeed be cry for freedom. the home of the brave. Until then, we A faith mediated through the black are all on a journey together—the long church taught us that weeping may journey home. X school of theology

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J O UR N A L

to the hills

BY WALTER EARL FLUKER (GRS’88), MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. PROFESSOR OF ETHICAL LEADERSHIP

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it, but in facing what lies beyond this world, we might find true freedom.

All men come to the hills Finally. . . .

Men from the deeps of the plains of the sea— Where a wind-in-the-sail is hope, That long desire, and long weariness fulfils— Come again to the hills.

Salamano, woodcut by Joe Hemming

—From All Men Come to the Hills by Roger Mais

In Albert Camus’s 1946 novel, The Stranger, there is a tired old man named Salamano. He has an old dog. The dog, an ugly brute, was once a beautiful spaniel with a fine coat. Salamano resembles his dog: his towy hair has gone very thin, and he has reddish blotches on his face. The dog has developed its master’s hunched-up gait; it always has its muzzle stretched forward and its nose to the ground. In fact, the dog and its master are inseparable. But, though so much alike, they detest each other.

For eight years, Salamano and his dog follow a standard routine: twice a day, at eleven and six, the old fellow takes his dog for a walk—and for eight years

that walk never varies. The dog pulls the master along until the old man misses a step and nearly falls. Then he beats the dog and swears at it, and the dog cowers behind and the master drags it.

Salamano seems oblivious to the protests of others who decry his maltreatment of the animal. It is as if no one else in the world matters or exists except him and his dog, until one day, Salamano is discovered near collapse, “turning like a teetotum,” because his dog has slipped away—gone forever. He is alone.

About the Author

Walter Earl Fluker is a leading authority on Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King, Jr. The editor of the Howard Thurman Papers Project, which recently published the second volume of Thurman’s papers, he is also the author of Ethical Leadership: The Quest for Character, Civility, and Community. Before becoming a faculty member at BU, Fluker was founding executive director of the Leadership Center at Morehouse College.

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Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

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eath. We spend most of our lives avoiding

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What is it in life that really matters, finally? Is it family, friends, a good education, a great job, a high office; is it God or religion? Camus suggests that whether we believe in God, family, lovers, friends, status, finally, we are all condemned by the same sentence. And it is only in the courageous encounter and acceptance of our finitude that we find freedom. How strange that we spend most of our lives avoiding this question. We fill our days with appointments, meetings, projects, and things that disguise the final confrontation with the truth of existence: that life is a short walk from the cradle to the grave, and that we all come to the hills, finally.

Howard Thurman, former professor and dean of Marsh Chapel, often said, “The time and place of a person’s life on earth is the time and place of the body, but the meaning and significance of that life is as far-reaching and redemptive as the gifts, the dedication, the response to the demand of the times, the total commitment of one’s powers can make it.” It inspires us to ask, What is it to live, but not to take, life seriously?1 As I wrote in 2009: Thurman thought it demanded a journey into the interior; into those places we have sealed off and placed notrespassing signs around. It meant, for him, an inward journey into dangerous territory, where the real issues of life and death must be confronted, where the “angel with the flaming sword” greets us, where we are not allowed entry unless we yield “the fluid center of our consent”. . . . This journey, according to Thurman, is not extraordinary; in many respects, it is far removed from what we normally call “religion.” The angel with the flaming sword is encountered in the 34 b o s t o n u n i v e r s i t y

mundane, earthly experiences of living and being in the world. At any juncture in the road, there may suddenly appear a sign, a flash, a burning bush, which places us in candidacy for this experience. Often in struggle, in crisis, in the heart of suffering and trial, one encounters the angel.2 KISS OF SILENCE

Some years ago, while pastoring a church here in New England, I was called to the bedside of a dying woman. Although she was a member of my congregation, we had never met. She had stopped attending church years before I arrived. As I entered the room, I noticed a photograph on the bureau: it was the picture of a young, stately woman whose eyes were fixed with an intensity that mirrored a powerful, self-directed soul. This portrait was in stark contrast to the emaciated body lying in the bed. For a long while, we did not speak. We sat in silence. Finally, after the long stillness, she shared her story. She was once an attractive socialite, successful businesswoman, and caring mother. She was stricken with cancer and her life was thrown into chaos. The radiation treatments had left her bald and she had shed her outward beauty. She was now waiting.

I did not have any words to share with this woman. I just sat and listened in silence.

The white kiss of silence that the spirit stills Still as a cloud of windless sail horizon-hung above the blue glass of the sea—3 Then, after the long waiting and listening, something remarkable happened—in one swirling, God-drenched moment, our

1. Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart (Friends United Press, Richmond, 1976), 15.

2. Walter Earl Fluker, Ethical Leadership: The Quest for Character, Civility, and Community (Fortress Press, 2009).

3. Roger Mais, All Men Come to the Hills.

4. Ibid.

Howard Thurman, former professor and dean of Marsh Chapel.

Photo courtesy of BU Photography

5. Paul Tillich, “You Are Accepted,” in The Shaking of the Foundations. Tillich asks, “Do we know what it means to be struck by grace? It does not mean that we suddenly believe that God exists, or that Jesus is the Saviour, or that the Bible contains the truth. To believe that something is, is almost contrary to the meaning of grace.

Furthermore, grace does not mean simply that we are making progress in our moral self-control, in our fight against special faults, and in our relationships to men and to society. Moral progress may be a fruit of grace; but it is not grace itself, and it can even prevent us from receiving grace. For there is too often a graceless acceptance of Christian doctrines and a graceless battle against the structures of evil in our personalities.”

eyes met, better our spirits communed, “Deep called out to Deep,” and we were visited; sooner or later, we all come again to the hills, “come ever, finally.”4 ENOCH WALKED WITH GOD

By faith Enoch was taken so that he did not experience death; and ‘he was not found, because God had taken him.’

(Hebrews 11:5) To walk with God means to be taken

by God. What does it mean to be taken by God? Is it Tillich’s metaphor of being “struck by grace”?5 Have you ever been “struck by grace”? The

Apostle Paul was. On his way to tear down the early church, on a self-righteous crusade and convinced of his own calling to be God’s avenger, he discovered that his religion was really against God. So much of what we call religion, God never heard about. Often we think we are doing God’s bidding—living by inherited genealogies, traditions, and customs that have very little to do with God’s purpose in the world. To be “struck by grace” is to be thrown off our beasts, to have our own inventions and imaginations interrupted, and to discover that God is going another way, far beyond our limited understandings of faith and practice. To be “struck by grace” is to understand that at the heart of the universe, at the end of our strivings, there is mystery—and that mystery demands that we arise from our delusions about religion and God, and take a broader path without the security of worked-out formulas.

To be taken up by God first means to be lost in God. Our rational, bureaucratic culture reels in the face of such language; we fear separation, alienation, and death. But it is only in being lost that we are found. To be lost in God is not an escape from the world, but a call to live humanly and authentically in the world. The only thing that matters, finally, is the walk, the journey; and with whom we have walked: “Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him” (Genesis 5:24).

It is a lonely journey to the hills.

Yet, within all of us, there is a yearning to find company. In silence, we listen to the music of the hills and we realize that the sound has been there

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all along. Finally, we know that we do not walk alone. What is the religious life, after all, except call, response, and meeting? Alfred North Whitehead said, “Religion is what the individual does with his solitariness.”6 Secondly, to be “taken by God” acknowledges journey: the interiority of religious experience; to journey inward is to know and to be known in places we thought unknowable.

And yet, we fear that journey.

Maybe we fear journey because we are not human yet. Yes, we can beep to satellites in outer space and can email and tweet messages across the globe, but we cannot live authentically in our inner spaces and communicate with one another. This is because we are afraid. We are afraid to look at ourselves, to look at one another, and to see the love, the friendship to which God calls us. Friendship demands that we look into each other’s eyes: it requires risk, vulnerability, and openness. Our guards are always up; we have so much to conceal, protect, and hide, but friendship calls us into communion with ourselves, with one another, and with God. TO THE HEART OF THE MATTER

Some years ago, during the Thanksgiving holiday, my six-year-old son and I were watching E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial for at least the one-hundredth time. Although I was doing this out of parental duty, I must confess that each time I watch the movie, I am drawn closer to the extraterrestrial. That evening, I asked myself, “Is it possible that we simply have the need to believe in something or someone beyond our36 b o s t o n u n i v e r s i t y

selves in order to make sense out of our strivings, to fill the gaps? Or could it be that E.T. is more real than we dare admit?” No one needs a little sluefooted alien to tell them that we are a violent people, prone to deception and myth-making in mammoth proportions.

Then Clinton, my six-year-old philoso-

A carving showing Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus.

6. Alfred North Whitehead, Religion and Dogma, lecture to King’s Chapel, Boston, USA, February 1926.

7. Fluker, op. cit.

8. Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (Fortress Press, 1977).

9. Howard Thurman, Deep Is the Hunger (Harper & Brothers, 1951).

pher, asked, “Daddy, why does E.T.’s in 1958. In one of the letters, the heart glow in his chest?” I paused, wise old sage counseled the young thought about it, and replied, “Maybe, civil rights leader on the perils of Clinton, E.T.’s heart glows because journeying deep into the earth. He sughis chest is transparent; he is vulnergested to King that transparency, able and open.” Clinton was not vulnerability, openness, the struggle satisfied with this explanation. He per- for a friendly world underneath sisted, “But why does his heart glow friendly skies, exacts a great cost. in his chest? Isn’t his He encouraged the heart glowing because young visionary to To be lost in God he wants to get home?” deepen his channels, O, from the mouth of to go deep into the is not an escape babes! Then I thought, interior in order to from the world, but “How shall I ever find strength for the explain this to myself? long journey ahead— a call to live humanly Clinton does not need for the movement, and authentically an explanation—he he warned, has a life understands.” Then it of its own and unless in the world. The hit me like a ton of he was willing to only thing that bricks: this truth does endure the baptism not need superimposed of interior, he would matters, finally, analytical interrogabe swallowed up.7 is the walk, the tion; truth is not a Dare we go deep? mere proposition to be Dare we journey journey; and with argued and defended, inward until we are whom we have walked. rather truth is an event lost in God? Dare we to be experienced and join Thurman and lived. E.T. wanted to King as “transformed get home. “O, God,” I said nonconformists”8 and “apostles to myself, “my heart glows of sensitiveness”9 in a world that like E.T.’s. How I want to get demands our allegiance to genealohome! Lost in this world, lost in gies, mores, and customs that count this society, lost in a million spinning against friendship? nightmares of the soul, help me to get home!”

TAKEN WITH GOD Lastly, to be taken by God means to be taken with God. Enoch enjoyed BAPTISM OF THE INTERIOR God’s company.

Over thirty years ago, while conducting research for my dissertation, I discovered correspondence between Howard Thurman and Martin Luther I come to the garden alone King, Jr. written around the time of While the dew is still on the roses King’s near-fatal stabbing in Harlem And the voice I hear falling on my ear school of theology

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The Son of God discloses.

And He walks with me, and He talks with me, And He tells me I am His own; . . .10 Enoch and God were friends. They walked together in communion. In the inward journey, we walk with God. But to walk with God is a costly endeavor. God takes us into strange territory without a map, to places and spaces where evil is entrenched: to the gas chambers of Auschwitz; to the auc-

God will not give up on us, even when we have closed the door on ourselves; when we have painted ourselves into the corners of hell, when we have written ourselves out of the Book of Life, God remains.

tion blocks of Jamestown; to the killing fields of Soweto; to the bloody bushes of Sierra Leone; to the urban deserts of Dorchester, Boston, and Harlem, New York. God is searching for something in this world, but when the Creator of life and the world comes searching for that which is lost, those for whom God has come reject the same Creator. God searches for us in our alienation and despair, in our anxiety and travail; God searches for the misfits and misbegotten, the lost and the lame, the broken and bruised, the lonely and loathed.

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God will not give up on us, even when we have closed the door on ourselves; when we have painted ourselves into the corners of hell, when we have written ourselves out of the Book of Life, God remains, God cannot be removed; God remains.

Dare we walk with God as strangers and searchers? Dare we take our walk with God to the hills? X This article is based on a sermon given at the 2011 BU School of Theology Rites of Passage ceremony.

10. Charles Austin Miles, In the Garden (1912).

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J O UR N A L

a playdate with the early church BY MEREDITH E. HOXIE SCHOL (’11)

40 b o s t o n u n i v e r s i t y

An intricately decorated home in the ancient Roman city of Ephesus.

helps her question conventional thinking on the formation of the early Christian church.

I was an early childhood educator in a previous life. In addition to wiping noses and singing songs about what goes on in the bathroom, I had to think creatively about teaching children who could not yet read. Later, as a graduate student at the School of Theology, surrounded by books and never-ending reading lists, I often felt completely out of practice with that kind of creativity.

My experiences in the ancient Roman city of Ephesus in 2011, however, brought me back to those moments of engagement; this time with my own education, through contextual learning.

In early childhood education, children learn much through playing and pretending. One of the most popular methods is Home Living, where children pretend to cook dinner, put a baby down for a nap, or dress up like mom, dad, or their favorite teacher.

Students learn how to behave (saying “please” and “thank you” when someone serves them a plate of spaghetti),

how to treat one another (taking turns pretending to be “Mommy”), while also learning language of that particular space (what we call “this” or “that”).

They’re also given the chance to imagine what life might be like for the grown-ups who interact in the home, and spaces like it, every day.

Just as my four-year-olds loved playing home, I was filled with a sense of joy and wonder as I walked through the homes that once belonged to the people of Ephesus—in modern-day Turkey, but once part of the Roman Empire. There was so much to learn from the space itself. Perhaps the most striking connection I felt was when we walked through the Slope Houses, the former homes of affluent Ephesians built on a terrace. Seeing the walls, the art, the nooks and corners of this space gave me a completely different under-

About the Author

Photos on this and facing page by Mark Schol (SHA’03, STH’12)

A

former childhood educator’s exploration of ancient ruins

Meredith E. Hoxie Schol graduated from the School of Theology in 2011. A native of North Carolina, she is a certified candidate for ordination as a deacon through the North Carolina conference of the United Methodist Church. She is currently studying for a PhD in Christian education and congregational studies at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois.

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Photos by Mark Schol

also took us to nearby Priene, Sardis, and standing of the lives lived within them Miletus—we saw evidence of a range of than I could have gained from a book. religious activities inside the home. The As we walked through the homes, they inscriptions of menorahs we saw in one gave me a unique perspective on what of the houses in Priene showed evidence domestic life might have looked like in this huge city during the Roman Empire of Jewish worship. This small, private and the early years of the Christian faith. worship space evoked images of the kind of ecclesia, or home-church gatherings, During the trip, I drew a very real in which most Christians imagine the connection between the importance of early church worshiped, especially based the domestic space itself and the formaon the Book of Acts and tion of early religious the early apostolic writings. practice. The home, and We saw an impressive At the other end of the culture that defined the synagogue in Sardis. the spectrum, however, practices within it, estabwe saw an impressive lished a sense of identity, In addition to its synagogue in Sardis. In which provided the founprominent location, addition to its prominent dation for worship of the location, its sheer size Roman emperor and for its sheer size issued issued a challenge to trathe gatherings of the early a challenge to ditional thinking, which Jesus-follower movement. concentrates on the pritraditional thinking, PRIVATE AND PUBLIC vate nature of Judaism which concentrates on WORSHIP at this time. The theater in Miletus held another In Ephesus, we squeezed the private nature of challenge—an inscripthrough halls and wandered Judaism at this time. tion naming “Jews and down sidewalks that once Godfearers,” holding them bustled with city traffic and household slaves. We gazed upon wall and as people known to the community and participating publically in the arts and floor mosaics, commissioned to express entertainment of the day.1 The open the artistic preferences of owners, which continued to tell the stories of what this nature of the synagogue and the inscripcommunity found beautiful. The magnition (certainly more public than the wall tude and detail of many of those rooms carvings of menorahs in Priene) raise showed the effort taken to build and questions about early Christian texts that maintain them (and the slave labor used picture the early Jesus-followers as conduring this period), while the size and fined to private worship. Do these texts grandeur told of the ways people lived, accurately portray what was happening entertained, and showcased their status. in the early church?

Given that this was a class in the According to some scholars, includSchool of Theology, we were also ing Ittai Gradel, domestic and public interested to discover the religious pracworship may have been more closely tices of the day in what we saw. As we intertwined than some early sources explored various ancient sites—our visit have allowed.2 According to Gradel,

Above and opposite: Wall art in a dining room in Ephesus depicting mythological figures and cultural deities.

1. Jennifer Knust, “The Temple and Inscription at Sardis.” Lecture for TN 833: Archaeology and Christian Origins, BU School of Theology, Sardis, Turkey, 15 March 2011.

2. Ittai Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Clarendon Press, New York, 2002).

writing in Emperor Worship and Roman Religion, household cults shaped early religious practices, including emperor worship. The paterfamilias (head, or father of the family) was worshiped as a sign of respect of one’s family identity and lineage; the imperial family, says Gradel, eventually became associated with that practice.3 If one accepts Gradel’s argument, the importance of domestic space in the early church cannot be understated: public imperial worship came out of private homage to the father of the household. The practices of an individual family or community merged and meshed with the practices of the Roman Empire and were transformed, “along with the character of the Empire itself.”4 HOME LIVING 3. James Walters, “Lectures from Ephesus.” Lectures for TN 833: Archaeology and Christian Origins, BU School of Theology, Ephesus, Turkey, 14 March 2011.

Seeing physical reminders of the range of civic and religious activity in both public and private spaces led us to new perspectives, questions, and ways of learning.

This contextual education opportunity,

supplemented with lectures from some of the foremost scholars on these sites, inspired a curiosity within me and my fellow students. It reminded me of the sense of wonder and exploration I saw in my preschoolers.

My children played “home living” because it was one of the most comfortable, familiar spaces for them. The homes of the Ephesians were not as familiar to me, but moving through the ruins gave me a chance to imagine and feel connections with my own reality.

My children could easily pretend to be mom in the kitchen because they knew its function. So too, as a student myself, albeit a bit older than those kids, I found some of my most meaningful moments in a domestic space. Entering into the places where people would eat, relax, and entertain gave me a direct way to imagine, to pretend, what life might have been like. The opportunity to experience, to “play,” in those ancient homes and communities taught us in ways that books simply could not have done. X

4. Richard Lim, “The Gods of the Empire,” in Roman World, ed.

Greg Woolf, 260–289 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003).

Painted walls in a Slope House, once home to an affluent family in Ephesus.

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ST H N E W S

Returning Home

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he 5,000 alumni, family, and friends who came to campus for the 2011 Alumni Weekend in October were reminded of what they most value about BU: An electrifying speech by civil rights leader James Morris Lawson (’60), an interactive seminar on ethical leadership by Professor Walter Fluker, and a rocking service at Marsh Chapel especially resonated with STH alums. The 2011 Alumni Weekend had a special twist, too, with events celebrating BU’s black alumni and heritage.

X If you missed it . . .

Watch James Morris Lawson talk about his role in nonviolent activism at www.bu.edu/ buniverse. And be sure you don’t miss out on future opportunities to catch up with old friends by visiting www.bu.edu/ sth/events to keep up with everything happening for alums at STH—and in your region.

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Celebrating the 2011 Alumni Weekend were (clockwise from top left): James Lawson (’60) speaking during the Lowell Lecture; Calvin Morris (GRS’64, ’82; STH’67), Sharon Watson Fluker, and Walter Earl Fluker (GRS’88); Fluker leading a seminar on ethical leadership for alumni; doctoral student Derrick Muwina (’10, ’17) at the King Collection in the Gotlieb Archival center; Gary Nettleton (’73) and Theodore (Teddy) Lockhart (’68) at the alumni breakfast; Lawson meeting the artist Pamela ChattertonPurdy, painter of the icons of the Civil Rights movement series; and LaTrelle Miller Easterling (’04) delivering a sermon at Marsh Chapel.

Connecting STH to the World

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host regional events, Karpf says it helped introduce STHConnect to promote increased dialogue and lifelong learning: “STHConnect is an opportunity to stay abreast of student interests, continue to learn from professors and colleagues, and share your expertise and experience.” The launch is part of an initiative “to connect with more than 3,800 alumni and raise $24 million in the next five years,” adds Karpf, who aims to encourage increased backing for student aid and housing, endowed faculty chairs, and improvements to facilities.

Alums who want to connect with STH in person or share their own news can also contact Karpf and the development team, and he “invites you to inform us and other alumni of life and career updates on the Alumni News section of www. bu.edu/sth.”

X Find out More Participate in the STH community at www.bu.edu/STHConnect. You can contact Ted Karpf and the development office at sthalum@ bu.edu and 617-353-2349.

Photos by Pippa Mpunzwana

ou face a dilemma, perhaps professionally, maybe spiritually. Who do you turn to?

Once, it would’ve been a favorite professor or trusted classmate.

And it could be again. STH has launched a new website, www. bu.edu/STHConnect, that “puts the resources of a world-class seminary at your disposal,” according to the School’s new Director of Development & Alumni Relations Ted Karpf, a 1974 graduate of STH and 2007 Distinguished Alumni Award winner.

STHConnect includes thoughtprovoking articles and how-to guides from the School, with space for alums to comment or contact authors. Alums can submit their own articles at sthcon@bu.edu or get in touch to “let us find an author to answer one of your burning questions.” Karpf describes the site as a place to “check us out, learn how STH is approaching theological education, give us ideas, and connect with faculty.”

Although the development office already has programs that allow alums to network, participate in class reunions and alumni weekends, mentor students, and

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ST H N E W S

INTRODUCING THE 2011 DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD WINNERS. PRESIDENTIAL COUNSELOR

After Bill Clinton spoke to the nation about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, one of those ready to offer counsel to the embattled president was J. Philip Wogaman (’57, GRS’60). In his subsequent book, From the Eye of the Storm: A Pastor to the President Speaks Out, Wogaman, then a minister at Foundry United Methodist Church, Washington, D.C., discussed issues of forgiveness and repentance. Wogaman subsequently led the American Theological Society and Iliff School of Theology, Denver, Colorado.

MILITARY CHAPLAIN

Janet Yarlott Horton (’76) has broken many boundaries—despite the battles that have raged around her.

An army chaplain for nearly three decades, Horton was the first woman

STH’s Ted Karpf with (from left) Jeremy Smith (’06), Janet Yarlott Horton (’76), Barry W. Lynn (’73), and J. Philip Wogaman (’57, GRS’60).

to be appointed division chaplain and the first to be made a colonel in the U.S. Army. Her tours took her to Korea and the former Yugoslavia.

Now retired from the military, she endorses Christian Science chaplains for the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston.

FIRST AMENDMENT ADVOCATE

Barry W. Lynn (’73) is the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. An ordained United Church of Christ minister and a lawyer, Lynn campaigns to preserve the U.S. Constitution’s separation of church and state. He’s also the host of the radio show Culture Shocks, a frequent television commentator, and the author of a number of books, including Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom.

PASTOR—AND NERD

Jeremy Smith (’06) is a selfconfessed technology nerd. His website, hackingchristianity.net, includes church resources and articles, as well as “humor and Star Wars.” Smith has also written social media guides for church youth groups and “What the Church can learn from Wikipedia,” a series of articles encouraging churches to consider themselves a work in progress. Smith’s ministry isn’t limited to the web—he’s an associate pastor at First United Methodist Church, Checotah, Oklahoma.

Bishop Sally Dyck, a leading voice in the push for a more eco-conscious church, was also named a 2011 distinguished alum—read our full profile on her career on page 8.

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his magazine has been full of the names of old prophets. Now it’s time to add those of some contemporary stars. The School of Theology has made six appointments to its faculty roster and, according to Dean Mary Elizabeth Moore, they bring a “diversity of theologies and theological approaches, disciplines of study, ethnicity, gender, region, sexual orientation, class background, and faith tradition.”

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The newly appointed faculty are: David Schnasa Jacobsen, leader of the homiletical theology project; Rady Roldan-Figueroa (’05), a native of Puerto Rico and specialist in early modern history in the Spanish-speaking world; Phillis Isabella Sheppard, a psychoanalyst and womanist pastoral theologian; Pamela Lightsey, a theological ethicist who serves as

associate dean for community life and lifelong learning; Cristian De La Rosa, director of contextual education and community partnerships and an expert in Hispanic ministries; and Wanda Stahl (’91, ’92), director of contextual education and congregational partnerships, and former director of Christian formation for the New England Annual Conference.

Photo by Cydney Scott

ministering to presidents and Soldiers

IN MEMORIAM

John Henderson Cartwright, professor emeritus and first Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Social Philosophy, on April 22, 2011. A tribute by Walter Earl Fluker, Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership.

Photos by BU Photography

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have often wondered where my life and career would have headed had I not met John Henderson Cartwright.

James Hillman writes: “Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path . . . a signal moment . . . an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation: This is what I must do, this is what I’ve got to have. This is who I am.”

The long memories that remain of Cartwright are of a different sort than simple recollections. My time at Boston University was filled with a busy schedule of balancing research and writing with pastoral work—a burdensome combination for all who have attempted this ill-advised pursuit.

Cartwright never allowed me to compromise my intellectual integrity with the many, seemingly never-ending demands of the pastoral office. The marked-up exams on early Greek philosophical and ethical perspectives that are still in my possession remind me of his exacting (I felt, then, totalitarian) requirements for excellence. Yet, over my eight years as a student at Boston University, he never failed to give time, energy, and thought to my many questions and challenges.

Beyond the moments of rigorous intellectual labor that he absolutely demanded of all his students, were the times when this kind and generous human being extended hospitality to

me and my young family. I shall never forget an evening at the home of the Cartwrights and how, after dinner, he stole away with our three-year-old son and was completely absorbed at play and laughter, revealing a grace that I was privileged to witness. Benedictus qui est venit in nomine Domine.

Homer Jernigan, former professor and director of the Danielsen Institute, on July 30, 2011. A tribute by Professor Emeritus Merle Jordan.

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omer Jernigan lived a fulfilled vocation in a holistic way. He was a minister, seminary professor, pastoral counselor, clinical supervisor, social justice advocate, and founding member of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors. He was also director of the Boston University Danielsen Institute, heading its PhD program in pastoral psychotherapy and fostering the commitments of Albert (Hon.’64) and Jessie (SED’39) Danielsen. Jernigan was a strong believer in the possibilities of human growth, and his perspective is captured in Anne Lamott’s affirming statement: “God loves us exactly the way we are, and God loves us too much to let us stay exactly the way we are.” Jernigan’s life and work at Boston University were profound blessings in so very many ways.

Homer Jernigan, A tribute by Elizabeth Findley Hazel (’90), UCC pastor and Dean’s Advisory Board Member.

Homer Jernigan was not afraid of lectures that dug deep and he did so without adornment or apology. Not

immediate or splashy, his caring for students was nevertheless deep, solid, tolerant of differences in opinion, and just what you most needed.

Harold H. Oliver, professor emeritus of philosophical theology and New Testament, on September 22, 2011.

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30-year stalwart of the School of Theology, Harold H. Oliver was known for the breadth of his teaching and knowledge. He joined STH in 1966 as an associate professor of New Testament and retired in 1997 as professor of philosophical theology. He was also a sometime director of the School’s doctor of ministry program. A former student, John Thatamanil (’91, GRS’00), recalls learning everything from Buddhist theology to the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead in Oliver’s classes: “For each of us, Harry’s presence was a vital blessing in our lives. I cannot imagine who I would be without him.” Oliver is survived by his wife, Martha, and daughter, Daphne.—AT

X Online Extra You can read more tributes to deceased alums and other friends of BU School of Theology at www. bu.edu/sth/recent-alumniaedeaths. To learn more about family memorial gift requests or tribute gifts to the School of Theology, please contact Ted Karpf at tkarpf@bu.edu and 617-353-2348.

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RE AD I N G LI ST

AluM & Faculty Books NOT SURE WHAT BOOK TO READ NEXT? WHETHER YOU WANT A COMING-OF-AGE NOVEL FOR YOUR VACATION OR AN EXPLORATION OF GOD AND QUANTUM PHYSICS TO GET YOUR GRAY MATTER FIRING, YOU MIGHT FIND IT AMONG THE RECENT BOOKS BY SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY ALUMS AND FACULTY.

BOO KS BY AL U MS

Gerald (Jerry) Anderson (’55, GRS’60) contributed a chapter to Christianity and Chinese Culture, edited by Ruokanen and Huang (Eerdmans, 2010). The book was first published in Chinese in Beijing in 2005.

Judith Boss (’90, GRS’90) is pleased to announce the publication of her latest book Deception Island (PublishAmerica, 2011), a suspense-thriller set in Antarctica.

Boss carried out extensive research—including on a trip to Antarctica—for the book.

Scott Bryant (’02) has released The Awakening of the Freewill Baptists: Benjamin Randall and the Founding of an American Religious Tradition (Mercer University Press, 2011).

Sally Dyck (CAS’76, STH’78) coauthored A Hopeful Earth: Faith, Science, and the Message of Jesus (Abingdon Press, 2010). You can read more about Dyck on page 8.

Casely B. Essamuah (’03) wrote Genuinely Ghanaian (Africa World Press, 2010), a history of the Methodist Church in Ghana, 48 b o s t o n u n i v e r s i t y

from 1961 to 2000. Essamuah is an ordained minister of the Methodist Church Ghana and is a pastor at Bay Area Community Church, Annapolis, Maryland.

Nancy Kilgore (’93), an ordained Presbyterian minister and pastoral psychotherapist, has published the novel Sea Level (RCWMS, 2011). You can find out more about the book at www.nancykilgore.com.

Shelly Matthews (’87) is the author of Perfect Martyr: The Stoning of Stephen and the Construction of Christian Identity (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Matthews is Dorothy and BH Peace Jr. Professor of Religion at Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina.

Donald Messer (’66, GRS’69) published Names, Not Just Numbers (Fulcrum Publishing, 2010), which tells the stories of people fighting hunger and disease and explores the politics behind the AIDS epidemic and world hunger.

David Poindexter (’56, ’57) wrote Out of the Darkness of Centuries (BookSurge Publishing,

2009), which he says, “takes the reader through rich history whereby entertainment-education was effectively implemented in multiple countries to successfully impact social behaviors affecting millions of people.”

David Seaburn (’75) has published his third novel, Charlie No Face (Savant Books and Publications, 2011). It is a “coming-of-age novel about a time when eleven-year-old Jackie meets every kid’s greatest nightmare—disfigured hermit Charlie No Face—and his life is changed forever.”

John H. Stanfield, II (’05) is the author of Black Reflective Sociology: Epistemology, Theory, and Methodology (Left Coast Press, 2011).

Two alums, Andrew Tripp (’09) and Kate Netzler (’08), contributed chapters to Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and Graphic Novels (Continuum, 2010).

These announcements are edited from notices first published at www.bu.edu/ sth/alumni-development/connect/ alumniae-publications. Visit the site for a full list.

BOOKS BY FACULTY

Christopher B. Brown ed., Luther’s Works, Volume 58: Selected Sermons V (Concordia, 2010).

Christopher H. Evans Liberalism Without Illusions: Renewing an American Christian Tradition (Baylor University Press, 2010).

Robert Allan Hill Seeing with the Heart: Devotions from Marsh Chapel (Cognella, 2010).

Jennifer W. Knust Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice: Images, Acts, Meanings (Oxford University Press, 2011), edited with Zsuzsanna Várhelyi; and Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions about Sex and Desire (HarperOne, 2011).

Elizabeth C. Parsons What Price for Privatization? Cultural Encounter with Development Policy on the Zambian Copperbelt (Lexington Books, 2010).

Rodney L. Petersen James Nash: A Tribute to Environmental Ethics, Ecumenical Engagement and Public Theology (Boston Theological Institute, 2010), edited with Norman Faramelli; and Tracing

Contours: Reflections on World Mission and Christianity, edited with Marian Simion (Boston Theological Institute, 2010).

Phillis Isabella Sheppard Self, Culture and Others in Womanist Practical Theology (Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2011).

Thomas W. Porter The Journey: Forgiveness, Restorative Justice and Reconciliation, with Stephanie Hixon (Women’s Division, The General Board of Global Ministries, 2010); The Spirit and Art of Conflict Transformation, Creating a Culture of JustPeace (Upper Room Books, 2010).

Andrew Shenton Messiaen the Theologian (Ashgate, 2010).

Shelly Rambo Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining (Westminster John Knox Press, 2010).

Dana L. Robert Joy to the World! Mission in the Age of Global Christianity (Women’s Division, GBGM: The United Methodist Church, 2010).

Rady Roldan-Figueroa Exploring Christian Heritage: A Reader in History and Theology (Baylor University Press, 2011), edited with C. Douglas Weaver and Brandon Frick; and The Ascetic Spirituality of Juan de Ávila (1499–1569) (Brill, 2010).

James C. Walters Corinth in Context: Comparative Studies on Religion and Society, edited with Steve Friesen and Daniel Schowalter (Brill, 2010).

Kirk Wegter-McNelly The Entangled God: Divine Relationality and Quantum Physics (Routledge, 2011).

Wesley J. Wildman Religious and Spiritual Experiences (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry: Envisioning a Future for the Philosophy of Religion (State University of New York Press, 2010).

STH FACULTY PUBLISHED MORE THAN 60 BOOKS AND ARTICLES IN 2010–2011.

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FACUL TY I N T E R V I E W

The Bible’s Contradictions about Sex WHEN IT COMES TO SEX, THE GOOD BOOK IS NOT A RULE BOOK, ACCORDING TO ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR JENNIFER KNUST.

AN INTERVIEW WITH JENNIFER KNUST BY STEPHEN PROTHERO, PROFESSOR OF RELIGION, BU COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES

Photos by Vernon Doucette

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Jennifer Knust (top) and Stephen Prothero

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t is easy to label Jennifer Knust, the author of Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions about Sex and Desire, a theological renegade. And she does say the sorts of things in this book—about premarital sex and abortion and gay marriage—that make conservatives shudder. But in one respect at least, Knust, a School of Theology associate professor, is a throwback.

Long ago and in a place far away, Christians used to actually fear God. They saw a yawning gap between their limited intelligence and the mind of God. So they were exceedingly careful about presuming what God had to say about almost anything. “He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts,” wrote the Protestant reformer John Calvin, “let him go elsewhere” than the biblical text.

Today, many supposedly conservative Christians have no trouble pontificating on what Jesus would do about the deficit or what the Bible says about war and peace or sex and the solar system. Knust, who is an ordained American Baptist pastor, thinks that this confidence is not only preposterous, but perhaps idolatrous as well.

PROTHERO: Why another book on the Bible and sex? What does your book have to tell us that we don’t already know?

KNUST: Because the Bible continues to be invoked in today’s public debates as if it should have the last word on contemporary American sexual morals. The only way the Bible can be a sexual rule book is if no one reads it. Unprotected Texts seeks to offer a comprehensive, accessible discussion of the Bible in its entirety, demonstrating the contradictory nature of the biblical witness and encouraging readers to take responsibility for their interpretations of it.

But everybody knows the Bible is against abortion and gay marriage and premarital sex. Is everybody really wrong?

Yes. The Bible does not comment on abortion and gay marriage. Some biblical writers argue against premarital or extramarital sex, especially for women, but other biblical writers present premarital sex as a source of God’s blessing.

Really? Where does the Bible give a green light to premarital sex?

Perhaps the most striking example is in the story of Ruth, though there are other examples as well. According to the Book of Ruth, when the recently widowed Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi were faced with a famine in Ruth’s homeland Moab, they returned to Israel impoverished and with little hope of survival. Ruth took to glean-

ing in the fields to find food for herself and Naomi. The owner of the fields, a relative of Naomi named Boaz, saw Ruth and was pleased by her. When Naomi heard about it, she encouraged Ruth to adorn herself and approach Boaz at night while he was sleeping to see what would happen. Ruth took this advice, resting with him until morning after first “uncovering his feet” (in Hebrew, “feet” can be a euphemism for male genitals). The next day, Boaz goes to town to find out whether he can marry her, and, luckily, another man with a claim to Ruth agrees to release her.

They do marry and together they produce Obed, the grandfather of King David.

None of this would have been possible if Ruth had not set out to seduce Boaz in a field, without the benefit of marriage.

You say the Bible can’t be used as a sexual rule book. Can it be used as a rule book for anything? Are Christians left to make moral choices without any guidance from biblical sources?

We can certainly turn to the Bible for guidance on moral issues, but we should not expect to find simple answers to the moral questions we are asking. Sometimes biblical conclusions are patently immoral.

Sometimes they are deeply inspir-

ing. In either case, we are left with the responsibility for determining what we will believe and affirm.

OK, but what about Jesus? Can we appeal to him on these questions?

Wasn’t he opposed to divorce, for example? And what does his decision not to marry tell us today?

Certainly Christians should try to understand how Jesus might respond to a concern or problem they are facing. But Jesus’ words do not come to us uninterpreted.

Preserved within Gospels written several decades after his death, they have been reshaped in light of the experiences of the Gospel writers.

Also, those who have transmitted these sayings to us have left their own mark, sometimes editing and changing Jesus’ words. This is particularly true when it comes to Jesus’ teachings on divorce. As I show in my book, Jesus’ sayings on divorce were presented in diverse, contradictory ways, though remarriage was universally forbidden.

The prohibition against remarriage, however, makes sense when it comes to the Gospels. All the Gospel writers believed that Jesus would soon return to bring the kingdom of heaven, making marriage irrelevant.

In my book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—and

Doesn’t, I argue that American politicians often use the Bible without knowing what it really says. Is biblical illiteracy a problem in U.S. politics in your view?

Yes. In political contexts, the Bible is repeatedly invoked as if it can support one particular view, though upon a closer examination, it is quite clear that the passages mentioned (if any are mentioned) say little to nothing about the topic at hand. The most egregious example is the citation of the Epistle to the Ephesians as a support for “biblical marriage,” which supposedly means marriage between one man and one woman for the purpose of procreation. Ephesians simply does not endorse this form of marriage. Instead, Ephesians recommends that a man love his wife and children and be kind to his slaves.

In a world where slaves could not marry and where their own sexual lives were entirely determined by their masters, this teaching endorses a hierarchical household where only certain men have access to the privileges of marriage, (human) property, and children.

When it comes to the Bible and sex, who in your view gets it most wrong?

And who gets it most right?

I’m not interested in judging who gets things wrong or right. Instead, I would like to convince all of

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“ Every human body is vulnerable, and sexual difference is one of the fundamental ways in which we experience being human. Absolute certainty about these matters would therefore be nice, if it were available. As even the Bible can teach us, it isn’t.”

—JENNIFER KNUST

Why in your view are Americans so obsessed about sex? Why does religion collapse so readily into morality and morality into bedroom issues?

superiority, thereby promoting their own brand of righteousness at the expense of someone else’s. Or perhaps people are simply longing for certainty about a topic that impacts everyone, since every human person desires to be touched and loved.

Every human body is vulnerable, and sexual difference is one of the fundamental ways in which we experience being human.

Absolute certainty about these matters would therefore be nice, if it were available. As even the Bible can teach us, it isn’t.

I wish I knew! Perhaps focusing on morality, especially morality in the bedroom, makes it possible for us to avoid facing other, more intractable problems.

Perhaps speaking incessantly about sexual morals allows some to assert a position of moral

You want us to “take responsibility” for our interpretations. But isn’t that precisely the rub in this debate? People who cite the Bible do so to call down the authority of God on their behalf. They are asking God to take responsibility for

us to take responsibility for the interpretations we are promoting. I would like us to stop pretending that the Bible has been dictating our conclusions to us so that we can evaluate the implications of what we are defending. The question for me is not whether an interpretation is valid, but whether it is valuable, and to whom.

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their interpretations, because they believe that those interpretations come from God. What makes you so sure they are wrong?

Because we are human beings, not God. By claiming that we can be certain about matters that we only partially understand, we are placing ourselves in the role of God. From a Christian perspective anyway, this is a serious sin.

Certainty is not granted to us.

As an American Baptist, an heir to both the radical Reformation and abolitionist American Protestantism, I would affirm the interpretive perspective adopted by antislavery activists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and insist that loving one’s neighbor is God’s chief requirement. I would defend this principle vigorously, and I deeply value its implications. Still, I cannot claim that the Bible made me reach this conclusion. Some biblical passages can support my point of view. Others do not. So, as firmly as I believe that “love your neighbor” can capture God’s point of view, I cannot be certain that I am right.

A version of this article originally appeared in the Huffington Post and BU Today. Reprinted with permission of Stephen Prothero.

supporting the school of theology THANK YOU TO OUR DONORS

W

e are grateful to the graduates and friends who continue to support our work; thank you to those who donated between July 1, 2010, and June 30, 2011.

HOW YOUR GIFT WORKS Research centers, endowed chairs, housing—every gift to the School of Theology helps us train tomorrow’s faith leaders. In the past year, your donations supported the following causes and funds: the Anna Howard Shaw Center, the Center for Global Christianity & Mission, the Center for Practical Theology, the Earl & Millie Beane Housing Fund, the Harrell F. Beck Scholar in Hebrew Scripture, the MLK-IDEAL Fund, and the Truman Collins Professorship.

Many gifts are also made without restriction and go directly to the School’s annual fund. Donors giving to the annual fund at a major level are welcomed into one of BU’s leadership societies; in this list, Leaders’ Circle members (those donating $1,000 to $2,499) are marked with “⌬” and President’s Associates members (those donating $10,000 or more) are noted with “⍀.”

You can find out more about all of STH’s leadership societies— and their benefits—at www.bu.edu/giving.

And, if you’re wondering what the other symbols in this list show, here’s a quick guide:

*

Faculty/Staff

† 2011 Class Gift ‡ Dean’s Advisory Board § Student

˚

Deceased

Made a Recent Gift? If you’ve made a donation to the School of Theology since June 30, 2011, we’d like to thank you, too. Visit www.bu.edu/sth/giving to see our online roster of recent gifts or to find out how you can support STH.

Abbott Laboratories Fund Madeline Ackerman John Hurst Adams, ’50, ’56 Katherine M. Adams, ’08 Ronald P. Adcock, ’69 Leon M. Adkins, ’52 Thomas R. Albin H. Pat Albright, ’56 Nancy Ruth Allen Terry Wayne Allen, ’73 Brian Clayton Alston, ’03 Edwin Daniel Aluzas, ’61, ’81 Jackie Ammerman* Nancy T. Ammerman* Gerald H. Anderson, ’55, GRS’60 John W. Annas Jr., ’30 Anonymous Pauline Ansah Voigt D. Archer, ’60 Brian E. Arnold, ’90, SSW’90 Margaret Arnold, ’08 Seth O. Asare, ’88 Elwood L. Babbin, GRS’54, STH’54 Elizabeth J. Bachelder Smith, ’84 Raleigh E. Bailey, ’68 Cleta O. Baker, ’54 Raymond E. Balcomb, ’47, GRS’51 John T. Ball, ’59 William Donald Bardwell, ’84 Bennett Herbert Barnes, ’93 Travis S. Barnes, ’56, ’57 Kenneth Duane Barringer, ’51, ’63 James A. Batten, ’57 James A. Baxter, ’65, GRS’69 Kenneth A. Beals, ’71, ’82 Wallen L. Bean, ’47, GRS’69 Barbara Oski Beane Earl R. Beane, CAS’63; STH’67, ’68

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supporting the school of theology

Mildred B. Beane, CFA’64, ’84; SED’95 Richard L. Beard, ’57, SED’83 Bartlett C. Beavin, ’66 Constantine S. Bebis, ’72 Mary E. Beene, ’06 George E. Bender, ’56 Ernest L. Bengston Jr., ’43 George H. Bennett, ’65 Hazel C. Bennett, ’60 Howard E. Benson, ’55 Daniel J. Berger, ’73 Linda Bell Bergh, ’67 Benjamin A. Berinti, ’91 Keith Thomas Berry, ’61, ’69 Marcia Berry, ’60 Kenneth E. Bibbee, ’52 Constance S. Bickford‡, ’97 Beth Ann Bidlack, ’89, GRS’00 Lori Elizabeth Bievenour, ’03 Roy O. Biser, ’73 V. Ned Bixler, ’56 Paul E. Blackstone, ’61 Paige Michele Blair, CAS’92, STH’92 Karen L. Blanchard, ’78 Robert W. Blaney, ’59, ’66 Jerome G. Blankinship, ’59 Jacqueline Beatrice Blue, ’09 T. Thomas Boates, ’68 Carole R. Bohn‡, SED’76, ’81 Mary Lou Greenwood Boice, ’90 Robert W. Boley, ’51 Richard A. Bolin, ’74 Robert H. Bolton, ’60, ’69 Samuel S. Bombara, ’76, ’82 Nye Oswell Bond, ’42 Daniel Edwin Bonner Jr., ’82 George Boone III, ’66 Judith Andrews Boss, GRS’90 Robert E. Bossdorf, ’80 Suzanne Woolston Bossert, ’01

54 b o s t o n u n i v e r s i t y

Richard Leon Bowman, ’66 Richard Perry Bowman, ’89 Ted W. Bowman, ’68 Kenneth A. Boyle, ’60 Charles A. Bradburn, ’64 James C. Braid, ’59 Carol J. Branscomb, ’81 Barbara Anne Brawley, ’92 David W. Briddell, ’55 Robert S. Brightman, ’53, GRS’69 John Calvin Brink‡, ’08 Annie Britton, ’03, ’05 Charles S. Brown Sr., ’73 Christopher B. Brown* Eugene S. Brown II, ’94 Raymond P. Brown, ’51 Steven Kent Brown, ’74, GRS’81 Thomas F. Brown, ’60 Tom Brown II, ’59 The Tom and Patricia Brown Living Trust J. Allen Broyles, ’59, GRS’63 Richard E. Bruner, ’54, GRS’65 Mary Bryant Gail P. Bucher David A. Buckey, ’53 Lewis M. Buckler, ’66 Jill Suzanne Buckley, ’03 Roger S. Burkhart, ’64, ’69 Richard Lee Burns, ’54, ’85 Richard J. Butler, ’83 Ivan Charles Bys, ’52 Amelita Grace G. Cajiuat, ’05, ’06 Gilbert H. Caldwell, ’58 Alan R. W. Campbell, ’61 Robert L. Campbell, ’54 William M. Campbell, ’73 Campbell Living Trust Voorhis C. Cantrell, GRS’67, STH’67 Burton D. Carley, ’74 Betty B. Carpenter, ’56

Eugene G. Carper, ’62 Paul H. Carr Sherwood E. Carver, ’56 Joe E. Casto, ’59 Maury Antonio Castro, ’08 William B. Cate, ’48, GRS’53 Arthur W. Chaffee, ’56 Dorothy J. Chaffee, ’56 David B. Chamberlain, ’53, GRS’58 Richard K. Chamberlain, ’61 William A. Chamberlain, ’55 G. Clarke Chapman, ’59, GRS’63 Richard G. Cheney, ’52 Dr. and Mrs. Paul W. Chilcote Kendrick Hodgdon Child, ’90 Chan Sun Cho, ’59 Hee An Choi* Dean A. Christian, ’86 Chai-Sik Chung, GRS’64, STH’64 David E. Church, ’57 Patricia A. Clark, ’60, GRS’63 Peter Yuichi Clark W. Russell Clark, ’44 Philip A. C. Clarke, ’54 Richard A. Closson, ’55 Bufford William Coe, ’90 Dottie Lou Colby, ’53 Katherine Cole§ Harry A. Coleman, ’60 Elizabeth Jane Collier, ’00 Maribeth W. Collins Terry Collins Mr. and Mrs. Truman W. Collins Jr. Concordia Publishing House Walter G. Connor, ’55 Arnold A. Coody, ’74 Jay Cooke III, ’67 Robert O. Crabbs, ’52 Randal B. Craft, ’89 Evans Edgar Crawford Jr., ’46, GRS’57 Walter C. Cross, ’75

Mark R. Cruise, ’85 Donald J. Cunningham, ’57 LeRoy Harlan Curtis, ’57 John F. Dale, ’57 Rodney M. Damico, ’83 Dana Robert Daneel* Marthinus L. Daneel* Kathe P. Darr* Mark Y. A. Davies‡, GRS’01, STH’01 Arthur Vining Davis Foundation Janice W. Davis Michael E. Davis, ’74 Walter T. Davis Jr., GRS’74 Donald E. Day, ’59, ’61 Kevin P. DeCoste, ’95 The V. Eugene & Rosalie DeFreitas Charitable Foundation Jerome K. Del Pino, ’71, GRS’80 Romeo L. DelRosario, GRS’81, STH’81 Douglas B. Denton, ’66 Norman E. Dewire‡, ’62 E. James Dickey, ’60 Gerald L. Dickey, ’64 Sally Ann Dickey, SED’59 Jack A. Diel, ’77 Paul M. Dietterich, ’53, ’61 Todd P. Dietterle, ’82 Nizzi Santos Digan, ’02 The Walt Disney Company Foundation Calvin G. Dixon, ’75 Richard A. Donnenwirth, ’57; GRS’58, ’63 Robert E. Dorr Sr., ’83 Philip H. Doster, ’57, ’59 Ian Theodore Douglas, GRS’93 Denis J. Dragonas, ’59 Emily Jane Drake, GRS’70 Maurice E. Drown, ’72, ’85 The Estate of Geneva W. Drumheller

E. David DuBois, ’52 Helen Kay Dukes, ’81 Bradley S. Dulaney, ’00 Richard C. Dunn, ’60 East Saugus United Methodist Church Robert H. Edwards, ’61 Stephanie Christine Edwards†, ’11, SSW’11 Charles A. Ellwood, ’55, ’58 Dorothy H. Emblidge, ’57 Joe G. Emerson, ’56 John H. Emerson, ’62 George H. Emmons Alan C. England, ’76 Clark S. Enz, ’44 Ronald E. Eppler, ’59 Richard K. Ernst, ’66 Casely B. Essamuah, ’03 Christopher H. Evans*, ’86 Richard L. Evans, ’62 Elliot T. Fair, ’80 Mr. and Mrs. Norman J. Faramelli* Richard R. Farnsworth, ’67 Sanford Fasth, DGE’53, SMG’55, STH’58 Stan Fawley, ’94 Fran Yeager Fehlman, ’51 Robert B. Fehlman, ’50, ’55 Ralph Fellersen, ’47 Mr. and Mrs. Radames Fernandez David R. Ferner, ’95 Eric Stephen Feustel, ’07 Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund W. Claude Fillingim, ’65 Dewey R. Findley, ’57, ’58 Wallace D. Finley, ’59 First Congregational Church Neal F. Fisher‡, ’60, GRS’66 O. Ray Fitzgerald, GRS’69 Jan Flaska, ’05, ’06 Walter E. Fluker*, GRS’88

Ada Jane Focer§, ’05, GRS’11 John W. Folley, ’75 Shannon Eric Ford, ’96 Martin R. Fors, ’91 Marvin Fortel˚, ’44 Gladys F. Fortuna-Blake, ’91 John M. Foster, ’58 Julia A. Foster, GRS’69, STH’69 Sarah Foulger, ’96 The Foundation for Evangelism Ann Charlotte Fox, ’00 Dean L. Francis, ’81 Hal W. French, ’64 Vernon C. French, ’52 Ernest S. Frerichs, ’52, GRS’57 The Ernest S. Frerichs Trust C. Dean Freudenberger, ’55, GRS’69 Harald A. Frey, ’55, ’61 The Frey Family Trust Lawrence R. Fry, ’74 James B. Fulmer, ’64 Rose Clarisse Gadoury, ’85 Harry M. Gardner, ’62 Orville Leo Gardner, ’57 Harold W. Garman, ’60, GRS’65 Iakovos Garmatis, ’57 Richard C. Garner, ’75 Linwood W. Garrenton, ’84 Madelyn H. Gaston, ’67 Charles H. Gates, ’54 Cheryln A. Gates, ’00 Douglas Geeting, ’90 Richard H. Gentzler Jr., ’83 Jack Ronald George, ’68 Dorothy L. Gerner, ’56 Lisa Renee Gesson, ’99 John P. Gilbert, ’64, ’68 Donald Arthur Gillies, ’61, ’91 Robert W. Gingery, ’44 David L. Glusker6, ’68 Georgia Gojmerac-Leiner†, ’11

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Sharon M. Goss, ’87, ’88, ’90 Sharon I. Gouwens, ’78 Grace Union Church Fred Wayne Graham, ’96 Raymond D. Graham, ’56 Charles W. Grande, ’56, GRS’71 Kenneth G. Y. Grant, ’75 Leslie E. Grant, SAR’76 Paradise J. G. Gray, ’80 Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee, ’04 Trelawney J. Grenfell-Muir*, ’04 George R. Grettenberger, ’55 Horace L. Griffin, ’88 Howard L. Grinager, ’83 Kenneth J. Grinnell Jr., CFA’74, STH’76 Kelvin B. Groseclose, ’67 Kathleen L. Tucker Gustafson, ’81 Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, ’66 Pauline Redd Hadley, ’49 Richard Kent Hagee, ’84 Julie Sullivan Hahn, ’07 Earl E. Hall, ’54 Frank A. Hall, ’72 Candace Hallett, ’07, ’11 Huntley F. Halvorson, ’67 Richard M. Hamilton, ’63 M. Gail Hamner, ’89 Shannon Hamrick, ’95 Dale R. Hanaman, ’70 Robert C. Harder, ’58 Richard Ernest Harding, ’53 Philomena Hare†, ’11 Amanda Orr Harmeling6, ’11 Barton Elliott Harris, ’76 John Hart* Paula D. Hart, ’83 Ray L. Hart* William G. Hart, ’66 Benjamin L. Hartley, ’00, ’05 Richard O. Hartman, ’54, GRS’63

56 b o s t o n u n i v e r s i t y

Susan Wolfe Hassinger* Mark S. Hathorne, ’76 A. Kempton Haynes Jr., ’62 Dwight S. Haynes, ’62, ’63 C. Douglas Hayward, ’46, ’50 Elizabeth Findley Hazel‡, ’90 J. Woodrow Hearn, ’55, ’65 Erika Hedberg, ’05 Beverly Ann Heitzenrater, ’54 H. Trall Heitzenrater, ’54 Robert L. Hemmerla, ’56 James T. Henderson, ’56 Paul L. Herring, ’89 Donald F. Hess, ’69 John Knox Hess, ’44 Soren Michael Hessler†, UNI’08, STH’11, SED’11 Dennis R. Hett, ’74 Robert B. Hibbard6, ’54, GRS’57 Allidah Benay Hicks†, ’11 Nobuya Higuchi, ’69 Marjorie L. Hiles, ’74 Robert A. Hill* Wayne L. Hill, ’56 Cletus E. Hirschy, ’52, ’65 Richard M. Hochstedler, ’48 Morley F. Hodder, ’56, ’63 Ronald W. Hoffman, ’58 Lauren J. Holm, ’08, ’73 Sung Chul Hong, ’90 Megan Elizabeth Hornbeek, ’05, SED’11 Francis Eric Horner, ’87 Mark Alexander Horton, ’86 William John Houston, ’86 Carl C. Howard1, SRE’29 Carl L. Howard, ’58 Evan Drake Howard, ’88 Meredith English Hoxie†, ’11 Louis Bach Hoyer, ’55, ’56; GRS’62 Donald B. Hoyle, ’60

Alfred J. Hubler, ’57 Blake Huggins†, ’11 Richard A. Hughes, STH’66, GRS’70 Howard Davis Hull, ’55 James D. Hull, ’65 Marilyn J. Itzkowitz Bishop S. Clifton Ives, ’63, ’83 David Lamar Jacks, ’60, ’65 F. Don James1‡, ’54, GRS’59 Ruth Loretta Jean, CAS’95, SED’98 Denis J. Jenssen‡, ’01, ’05 Richard A. Johnsen, ’55 Alvan N. Johnson Jr., ’74 Charles I. Johnson, ’57 Ellis B. Johnson, ’63, GRS’69 Frank E. Johnson, ’81, GSM’82 Hugh D. Johnson, ’66 John C. Johnson, ’75 John V. Johnson, ’72 Rollin E. Johnson Jr., CGS’55, SED’57, STH’61 Shephard Sterling Johnson, ’63, GRS’70 Gary William Jones, ’02 Jaclyn Kay Jones*, ’06 Jean M. Jones, ’68 Merle R. Jordan W. Garrett Judson, ’66 Sarah Bryson Kalish, ’91, ’92 Clark E. Kandel Jr., ’63 Yunjung Moon Kang, ’98, ’05 Kansas Area United Methodist Foundation Charles C. L. Kao, GRS’69, STH’69 George A. Karahalios, ’65 Ted Karpf *, ’74 Sara L. Kavich, ’62 Clarence A. Kaylor, ’62, ’78 Andrew J. Keck, ’93 William R. Keeffe, ’46, GRS’61 Maggie Joy Keelan, ’07

Arleon L. Kelley, ’71 E. Owen Kellum Jr., ’57 C. Travis Kendall, ’57, ’65 Elisabeth M. Kenosian, DGE’49, CAS’51, GRS’52 Allen F. Kerns, ’52 Jack J. Kersenbrock, ’61 James F. Key, ’75 Anastasia Elizabeth Kidd*, ’04 Chad William Kidd*, ’05 Deborah L. Kiesey, ’76 Chin Hyo Kim†, ’11 Dong Young Kim†, ’11 Manpoong Dennis Kim, ’89 Sangduck Kim†, ’11 Yeol Kim†, ’11 Yongshik Kim, ’61 Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, GRS’69, STH’69 R. Edwin King, ’61, ’63 Robert E. King, ’72 Robert G. Kingsbury, ’55 Emmalou Kirchmeier, ’88 Brenda Kirton, ’00 Donald G. Klarup, ’56 Delos L. Knight III Jennifer W. Knust* Mr. and Mrs. Chi Shown Ko Timothy Y. Ko David K. Koski, ’74 Stanley J. Krall, ’76 Byron Kadel Krapf, ’63 Thyra Mollberg Krier, ’77 Nicholas Krommydas, ’94 Barbara A. Kszystyniak, ’00 Heidi Schulz Kugler, ’97 Yuen-Kwan Maxine Kwok6, CAS’61, GRS’65, STH’65 Mark D. LaBranche, ’95 Lloyd H. Lambert, ’65 George E. LaMore Jr., ’56, ’59 Homer Warren Landis, ’83

G. Benjamin Lantz Jr., ’64, GRS’71 Lawrence L. LaPierre, ’95 David Raymond LaRoe, ’83 Jeffrey J. Larson, ’83 Paul V. LaRue, ’52 William A. Lasher, ’65 Christina Gummere Laurie, ’90 Marvest A. & Rosalie J. Lawson Trust Philip C. Lawton, ’74 Chung-Soon Lee, ’04 Vernon L. Lee, ’57 Yeonseung Lee, ’00, ’11 James S. Leslie, ’49, GRS’55 Paula Leslie Arnold R. Lewis, ’47 Mary Jane Lide, ’91 Lyle W. Lieder, ’47 Ross E. Lilly, ’57, GRS’62 T. Foster Lindley6, ’45, GRS’52 Desiree Ann Lindsay, ’87 Joanne Montgomery Link, ’59 Montgomery Link, ’92, GRS’06 Andrew P. Linscott*†, ’11 Robert P. Lisensky, ’54, GRS’60 Terry E. Litton, ’83 Theodore L. Lockhart6, CAS’65, STH’68 John C. Lombard, ’96 Herbert D. Loomis, ’44 Eric R. Lorey, GRS’99 Ellis Barrie Louden, ’74 The Louisville Institute The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. Hee-Chung Luhmann, ’57 Wendell D. Luke Pat Machugh Lynn G. MacLagan, ’80 Garvey F. MacLean, ’61 George MacNaughton, ’71 James Angelo Manganello6, GRS’70, SED’77

Charles R. Marble, ’63 Ralph A. Marino, ’67 C. William Martin, ’51 Edwin Martinez, ’81 William Matson Deborah Norris Matthews, ’61 Dorothy Elrod Matz, ’51 Everett W. Matz, ’52 Emily Jackson Mayers, ’59 Beth Maynard, ’93 Charles L. McCarthy, ’56 Harold R. Mcclay Jr., ’60 Adam John McClellan, ’00 Charles F. McCook, ’53, ’54; GRS’64 Robert M. McCoy, ’55 John L. McCullough, ’79 W. Robert McFadden, ’66 David Barry McGaffic, ’67 Donald B. McGaw, ’67 Lindsay Yarnall McGrath, ’01 Richard L. McGuire, ’62 Thomas S. McKeown, ’53 Carleton P. McKita, ’54 John G. McLachlan, ’62 Robert D. McNeil, ’58 Joseph C. McWilliams Jr., ’65, ’66 Donald F. Megnin, ’60 Quentin R. Meracle, ’99 Karen Huff Merrill, ’70 Alberto Merubia, ’51 Donald E. Messer‡, ’66, GRS’69 Lucille E. Metcalf, ’67 Henry Millan, ’63 M. Kent Millard, ’66, GRS’70 Minnietta M. Millard˚, ’66 Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. George F. Miller, ’61 Maurice A. Miller, ’52 Ross J. Miller, ’59 Nathan Corl Minnich, ’07 David B. Mitchell, ’69, GRS’78

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Gilbert C. Mitchell, ’55 Paul B. Mojzes, GRS’65, STH’65 Allen J. Moore, GRS’63, STH’63 Charles H. Moore, ’58, GRS’69 The Estate of J. Floyd Moore Lester L. Moore, ’52, ’53 Mary Elizabeth Moore* Nancy L. Moore, ’00 Robert A. Moore, ’58, ’59 Robert A. Moore, ’71 Calvin S. Morris‡, GRS’64, ’82; STH’67 Jay M. Morrison, SSW’71 Robert L. Morrison, GRS’92, SSW’07 Susan M. Morrison, ’72 Paul E. Morrissette, ’76 Joseph I. Mortensen, ’66 Emma J. Moulton, ’67 William W. Mountcastle Jr., ’54, GRS’58 James D. Mowrey, ’60 Don Allen Mueller, ’49 William P. Mullins Jr., ’72 Divine Aguh Mungre†, ’11 Gerald H. Murphy, SMG’49; STH’55, ’56 Donald B. Myrom, ’76 National Philanthropic Trust Elva E. Needles John W. Neff, ’54, ’61 Charles Edward Nelson˚, ’55 Rudolph L. Nelson, ’56 Elizabeth E. Neville Robert C. Neville* Ben E. J. New, ’68 New York Life Insurance Vernon C. Nichols, ’56, ’57 Dennis D. Nicholson, ’66 William A. Nicoll, ’50, ’51 George Y. Nishikawa, ’58 Keith Norman, ’84

58 b o s t o n u n i v e r s i t y

Donald C. Norris, ’53, GRS’72 Molly M. North, ’71 Northeastern Jurisdictional Conference Donald Gilford Nowers, ’53 Clayton A. Oberg, ’45 Margaret Ellen O’Connor, ’03 Helen M. Oliver, ’74, ’79 James F. Oliver, ’75 Sandra L. Olsen, ’82 Robin J. Olson, ’86 OppenheimerFunds Legacy Program Deborah Lee Ormay, ’04 Richard E. Ormsby, ’67 Nancy J. Osgood, ’66 Robert Louis Ostermeier, ’70 Robert Yaw Owusu, ’97 Oxford United Methodist Church Bilal Ozaslan, GRS’06, ’10 Miss Kwang-Hee Park, ’91 Brolin Christopher Parker, ’75 Lee Parkison, ’59 Jeanne A. Parsley, ’51 Elizabeth Parsons* Robert J. Pascoe˚, ’68 B. Carter Pate, ’58, GRS’64 Robert P. Patterson, CAS’52 Shirley Hoover Pearse, ’77 Robert B. Pearson, ’50 Galen E. Peckham, ’62 William Aaron Peden II†, ’11 Ralph M. Pedersen Jr., ’54 James E. Pender, ’62 Russell J. Peppe, ’62 Joseph A. Perez, ’55, GRS’64 R. Wayne Perkins, ’62, GRS’68 Russell E. Perry, ’51, ’52 Annah Peyiye†, ’11 Virgia B. Phoenix, ’61 Steven H. Pohlman, ’65 David O. Poindexter, ’56, ’57 Marian Jean Poindexter, ’56

Alton R. Pope, ’57 Thomas W. Porter, LAW’74 John E. Post R. Preston Price‡, ’70 The T. Rowe Price Program for Charitable Giving The Estate of Nathan D. Prince Charles B. Purdham, ’51 Larry A. Purvis, ’87 Jennifer A. Quigley†, UNI’08; STH’11, ’11 John Quinlan, ’00 John C. Radmore, ’52 Roger L. Ragan, ’53 Roger Lee Rambaud, ’86 Thomas W. Ramsbey, ’64, GRS’70 William E. Ramsden, ’57, GRS’60 Thomas A. Rannells, ’67 Philip S. Ratliff, ’63 Raven Aviation Robert E. Reber, ’64, GRS’73 James B. Recob, ’71 Holly Claire Benzenhafer Redford, ’09 Gene Reeves, ’59 Curtis F. Rehfuss, ’60 Charles E. Reichenbach, ’63, ’65 Dianne Reistroffer‡, ’82, ’89 Young Bok Rha, ’77 Alan C. Rhodes, ’76 Jeffrey E. Rhodes, ’78, ’83 W. Daniel Rich, ’58 Frederick H. Richard, ’64 Lucille J. Richard, ’88 Helen R. Richards Trust Eugene F. Richey, ’56 Earl W. Riddle, ’45 Riddle Trust Kevin C. Robert Keith A. Roberts, ’72, GRS’76 Joyce J. Robinson The Estate of Roswell R. Robinson

The Roche-Clark Revocable Living Trust Richard A. Rollins6, ’60 William W. Ross, ’45 John D. Roth, ’60 Benjamin F. Roush, ’66 Robert A. Rowe, ’63 Tongshik Ryu, ’58 Wonwha Lee Ryu, ’85 David B. Sageser, ’42 Wilfred Saint Jr.˚, ’55, GRS’57 Tex Sherwood Sample6, STH’60, GRS’64 Robert W. Sanders˚, ’56 James A. Sanderson, ’63 Dale J. Sauer, ’68 Russell C. Sawmiller, ’52 Douglas V. Scalise, ’89 Eileen Charlotte Scaringi, CAS’65, STH’69 Carl L. Schenck, ’73 Walter H. Schenck, ’65 Henry James Scherer Jr., ’64, ’74 Robert A. Schilling, ’56 Adrian Schoenmaker, ’56 John R. Schol, ’81, ’95 Kim M. Schuette, ’73 Mary J. Scifres, ’91, ’91 David William Scott, ’07 Harry W. Scott, ’73 Julius S. Scott Jr., GRS’68, STH’68 Gordon P. Scruton, ’71 Thomas A. Sears6‡, ’59 Eric M. Shank Paul H. Sharar, ’56 Richard W. Sharpe, ’58, ’60 David A. Shaw Jr., ’53 John J. Shepard, ’59 Sang Woo Shin, ’89 Mr. and Mrs. Thomas J. Shire Jr. James F. Shumake, ’02

Matriculation 2012: SAVE THE DATES The School of Theology has announced a series of events to celebrate Matriculation 2012—all alums and friends of the School are invited.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012 Reception, lecture, and dinner to commemorate the seating of the Walter G. Muelder Chair in Social Ethics.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012 Service of Matriculation and Class of 1962 50th Reunion.

Thursday, September 20, 2012 Distinguished Alumni panel, reception, and dinner.

To find out more about these events—and others at STH and BU— contact Jaclyn Jones at jkjones@bu.edu and 617-353-8972.

Ralph Kenneth Shunk, ’52, ’53 Charles R. Simmons, ’55 Jennie A. Simmons, ’80 John W. Simpers Jr., ’57, ’58 Kenneth L. Sipe, ’72 R. Thomas Slack, ’73 Willard V. Sleamaker, ’64 Alfred R. Slighter, ’52 Charles G. Small, ’70 Cherida Collins Smith Emerson W. Smith, ’44 Franklin P. Smith, ’53 James M. Smith˚, ’51 John W. Smith, ’74 Larry H. Smith, ’65 Rebecca Tseng Smith6, CAS’80, STH’82 Robert Smith, ’58 Charlene A. Smythe, ’68 Granville David Smythe Jr., ’67 Theodore J. Solomon, ’57 Stephanie C. Somers, ’73

Chang Hee Son, ’86, ’97 Margaret K. Soulen, ’58 Richard Nevins Soulen, ’57, GRS’64 Joan D. Spence, CAS’52, STH’54 Carol G. Spivey, ’55 Georgia M. Sprinkle, ’63 St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church Wanda Stahl*, ’91, ’92 Mark W. Stamm, ’95 William R. Stayton, ’67 Ralph S. Steele, ’49 Beverly E. Stenmark Douglas B. Stephens, ’75 Helen M. Stephenson, ’55 Barbara E. Stephens-Rich, ’76 Albert D. Stiefel, ’65, GRS’75 James A. Stillman, ’73, ’74 Bryan P. Stone* Lewis Seymour Stone, ’89 Floyd R. Stradley, ’85 Joong Suk Suh, GRS’86 Gerald V. Summers, ’56, GRS’59

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Ebenezer Sunanda, STH’68, GRS’69, SED’73 The Estate of Roland D. Sundberg, ’45 Harry G. Swanhart6, ’55, GRS’61 Jayne Susanne Swank†, ’11 John P. Tackney, CGS’67, STH’90 Andrew Robert Taylor, ’97 Lois L. Taylor Thomas S. Taylor, ’57 Williamson S. Taylor, ’84, ’89 The Estate of Anna Harvey Tekulsky Gailey C. Teller, ’88 Evelyn R. Thibeaux, GRS’80 Don F. Thomas, ’83 Gregory Thomas, ’01 Norman E. Thomas, GRS’68, STH’68 Herbert M. Thompson, ’64 Patricia J. Thompson, ’86 A. Lindsay Thorp Jr., ’76 James G. Todd, ’61 Mary Todd Albert Eugene Tomer, ’54, GRS’60 F. Norman Totten, ’59; GRS’69, ’77 Charles Thomas Tout, ’69 John W. Townsend, ’45 Nancy M. Treadwell Jean Marilyn Trench, ’90 The Jean M. Trench Revocable Trust George Williford Tripp, ’87 F. Thomas Trotter, ’53, GRS’58 Mark C. Trotter, ’58 The Trust Company of Virginia William C. Tubbs, ’90, GRS’99 Raymond L. Tucker, ’70 Jack M. Tuell, ’55 Marie R. Tulin, ’05 Richard D. Turner, ’64 Ibrahim Tutar, GRS’92 Herbert F. & Geneva B. Twombly Trust

60 b o s t o n u n i v e r s i t y

The United Methodist Church United Methodist Foundation of New England United Parish of Auburndale O. Murry Unruh, ’52 Miyeko Uriu, ’79 Paul Nelson Vail, ’90 Valerie D. Valentine, ’77 Peter J. Van Eys, ’93 Richard A. Vickery Jr., ’65, ’72 Mark O. Vietzke, ’67 Mary Ann Violette, ’04 Forrest J. Waller, ’60 James Christopher Walters*, GRS’91 Scott G. Walters, ’81 Zhongxin Wang, ’00 Carmen Dressler Ward, SED’74, ’93 Rolanda Ward, SSW’97, STH’02, GRS’09 Wayne G. Warner, ’65 John W. Waters, ’67, GRS’70 Philip Allen Watkins, ’97 Sharon L. Watson, ’67 Stephen Edward Wayles, ’91 Peter D. Weaver6, ’75 George Robert Webber, ’59 Miriam L. Weber, ’61 Kirk Wegter-McNelly* Darlene B. Weidner, ’93 Charles E. Weigel Jr., ’69 Ned E. Weller, ’57 W. Robert Wentworth, ’52 Harland Jordan West, ’55, ’55 Joan-Anne M. Westfall, ’89 Arnold Duane Westfield, ’65 Love Henry Whelchel Jr., ’62 George C. Whipple, ’44, GRS’47 Whipple Revocable Trust Kristin Leigh White, ’95 Woodie W. White‡, ’61

Frederic J. Whitley, ’72, GRS’74 Kenneth Ellsworth Whitney, ’63 Margaret S. Wiborg, ’94 Caroline B. Wiggin, ’09 Wesley J. Wildman* Lauress L. Wilkins, ’88, GRS’05 Foster J. Williams, ’45, GRS’51 Frank R. Williams, ’62, ’73 Robert H. Williams, ’63 Gale R. Williamson, ’61 Casey M. Wilson, ’97 Charles E. Wilson Jr., ’61 David R. Wilson, ’61 Edward P. Wimberly, ’68, ’71; GRS’76 Douglas E. Wingeier, ’54, GRS’62 Wisconsin United Methodist Foundation Inc. Jack Barton Witherspoon, ’92 J. Philip Wogaman, ’57, GRS’60 Elizabeth A. Wolfskill, ’60 Chong Youb Won, ’94, ’94 Charles Barry Wood, ’74 Kenneth E. Wood, ’70 Nathan L. S. Wood, ’88 Henry F. Woodruff, ’84 Cecilia Marie Woodworth†, SSW’11, STH’11 Paul R. Woudenberg, ’52, GRS’59 L. Darrel Wrider, ’74 Henry C. Yang, ’83 Darrell W. Yeaney, ’72 George I. Yetter, ’55 Barbara L. Yoost Charles D. Yoost, ’74, ’83 Richard H. York, ’77, GRS’87 Todd Russell Young, ’01 Monica Denise Yungeberg†, ’11 Victor R. Zaccaro, ’55 George E. Zeiders, ’83 John A. Zimmer, ’46

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Explorations of the concept of a spiritual home The Focus Journal starts on page

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