CDSP Crossings Fall 2014

FALL 2014

Women in Ministry A class examines progress, obstacles

Tide of Troubles An alumna’s Bosnian sojourn

Enhanced, Not Destroyed CDSP’s dean speaks on faith and science

Letter from the Dean On August 9, Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager was shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Since then, protests and legal proceedings have kept the situation in the news.

The circumstances surrounding Brown’s death remain in dispute, but one thing is certain: it was not an isolated incident. Four days before Brown was killed, police in Beavercreek, Ohio, gunned down John Crawford, a 22-year-old black man, who was attempting to buy a pellet gun in a Walmart. Three months later, another young black man was fatally shot by a white police officer in St. Louis. Police say 18-year-old Vonderitt Myers fired first, but Myers’ family says he was not armed.

We reflect on all of these shootings in the wake of the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin and the subsequent acquittal of the man who accosted and shot him. These terrible situations call Christians to raise our voices against anti-black racism and white privilege.

Recently, I asked the Rev. Edwin D. Johnson, ’10, priest-in-charge at St Mary’s Episcopal Church in Dorchester, Massachusetts, to share his insights as a black American about how our seminary’s mission of “Responding to the challenges of contemporary society with the good news of Jesus Christ,” can be understood and expressed in our work against racism.

“When I was 13, one of my mentors, an Episcopal priest from Detroit, tried to prepare me for the real world by saying, ‘Young black boys are considered cute. Black men are considered scary. One day you will wake up and know how the world sees you by the ways people respond to you.’

“He was an older guy, and I remember thinking that what he’d said was crazy. But in fact, that has been my experience. As I grew into manhood, in the eyes of many, I became an object of fear. I found myself

overcompensating by being super friendly and smiley so folks weren’t nervous around me all the time. So my mentor was right.

“Now that my wife Susan and I have a six-month-old son, Francisco, I find myself wondering whether I will have to have that same talk with him. I hope not.

“When I think about Ferguson, the major issue that keeps coming up for me is how little we all know one another. From the protestors to the police to Michael Brown, there seemed to be no meaningful, mutual knowing. Perhaps if there had been, this tragedy would not have ballooned so badly.

“Christ has a role in this kind of conversation, because the essence of Christ is that he sought to know everything about our experience through experiencing it. He models for us the importance of treating one another as if we were all made in God’s image.”

At CDSP we attempt to put Christ at the center of our teaching and discourse about race, power and privilege. Last November our community gathered to watch and discuss the 90-minute webcast organized by the Episcopal Church on the state of racism in the United Sates. In May, we hosted a workshop and panel discussion on rejecting the Doctrine of Discovery—the 15th century papal teaching that gave European nations dominion over the lands they “discovered” and the people in them. In June, CDSP hosted Why Serve 2014, a discernment conference for young adults from the Asian, Black, Indigenous and Latino communities. Each year, we strive through recruiting and financial aid to create a diverse student body to live, study and pray within the already rich diversity of the Graduate Theological Union.

Seminaries must form Christian leaders who can speak effectively of love and reconciliation to a society too often convulsed by violence and fear. I hope you will join me as we rededicate ourselves to this urgent work.

— T he V ery R ev . W. M ark R ichardson , P h D President and Dean Cover photo of Spencer Hatcher

by Thomas Minczeski

Photo by Joe Lough

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A Complex Progress

Good Gifts The Gibbs Society celebrates its new members and gives thanks for the generosity of the Greatest Generation.

Two decades after the first women became priests, a multi-generational class explores the challenges confronting women in ministry.

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Faculty News Curricular review, public presentations and new publications are just some of the activities that engage CDSP’s busy faculty.

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Y’all Come!

The Rev. Andrew Hybl, CAS ’12, CDSP’s new director of admissions, is eager to introduce potential students to the seminary that he loves. “The seminary, the students and professors, they all sell themselves,” he says.

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Active Alums

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A Ministry of Presence The Rev. Kirsten Spalding, MDiv ’12, (pictured at right) spent the 2013-14 academic year amidst the labor protests, flood and landslides that convulsed Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Crossings

Our alums are receiving new calls and immersing themselves in projects like a photo exhibit on “God and Youth on Detroit Streets.”

FALL 2014

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Giving Tuesday Students and staff energize a campaign to recruit online donors for CDSP using social media.

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Think Like a Business

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Science: a Gift, Not a Threat If the world is “the locus of God’s saving work,” then people of faith should be grateful for the insights of scientific exploration and eager for a deeper understanding of the mysteries of creation, says Dean Mark Richardson, who recently received the 2014 Genesis Award from the E ­ piscopal Network on Science, ­Technology and Faith.

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The Very Rev. W. Mark Richardson, Dean and President Editorial: Canticle Communications Photography: Joe Lough, Thomas Minczeski, Emily Mitchell, Kirsten Spalding, Richard Wheeler

Amy Vogelsang, CDSP’s CFO, says seminaries can rise to the challenge of being well-run, responsive, risk-taking institutions if they learn to think strategically.

Design: Barbara Nishi Graphic Design Crossings is published by Church Divinity School of the Pacific 2451 Ridge Road, Berkeley, CA 94709-1211 © Church Divinity School of the Pacific, all rights reserved.

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A path of 2

C R O S S I N G S Fall 2014 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific Photo by Thomas Minczeski

one’s own Forty years after the Philadelphia 11, class explores obstacles to women’s leadership by

Jim Naughton

Photo by Thomas Minczeski

Opposite: Gyllian Davies looks on as Deborah White makes a point in Visiting Professor Jenny Te Paa Daniel’s class on Women in Ministry.

Above: (left to right), Class members Richard Hogue, Terrance Goodpasture and Spencer Hatcher listen to Caroline McCall.

WHEN SHE SAT DOWN to compose her spiritual autobiography, Deborah White thought the journey that led her to enroll at Church Divinity School of the Pacific began when she was in her 20s. But as she began writing, White, who is 49, realized her calling had older roots.

“When I was nine, I was in the fourth grade and my father happened to be my Sunday school teacher,” says White, a graduating senior and candidate from the Diocese of California. One Sunday, to learn about the Eucharist, the class constituted its own simulated altar party. “I said I wanted to be the priest, and my father said I couldn’t because I was a girl,” White says. “After I begged and pleaded and said I would do it better than any of the boys, he let me do it.”

“The first real memory I have of feeling a call was standing behind the altar in the children’s chapel in the basement of my home parish and having my hands raised and having a sense that this was where I was supposed to be, but that the church would never recognize that, although it was very soon afterwards that it did.”

Forty years ago, the Episcopal Church began ordaining women to the priesthood. Eight years ago, the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, a CDSP alumna who was then the bishop of Nevada, became the first woman elected to serve the church as its Presiding Bishop. Six years later, the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings was elected President of the House of Deputies, becoming the first ordained woman to serve in that position.

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age immediately after those first ordinations, and women who have never known a church without female deacons, priests and bishops.

Each generation brings different expectations, experiences and insights to bear.

“I keep telling people about how refreshing it is to have this space to discuss so many issues that, as a young women within the church system, you feel but that go unspoken,” says Spencer Hatcher, a middler in her 20s from the Diocese of Maryland. “Just to get to name some of those things that are part of what it means to be a woman in the church is exciting.”

Gyllian Davies’ table illustrates the paucity of women in leadership positions in the Anglican Communion.

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Photo by Thomas Minczeski

Despite these significant breakthroughs, only three of the Episcopal Church’s 109 dioceses are led by female bishops, and a small minority of the church’s largest congregations, sometimes referred to as “cardinal parishes,” have female rectors.

Every Monday morning during the fall semester, White and eight other students gather with Jenny Te Paa Daniel, the St. Margaret’s Visiting Professor of Women in Ministry, to consider how far women have come in the struggle for equality in the Episcopal

“…the class illuminates the ways in which successive generations of women are responding to the complex and evolving challenges that confront them in the church.”

Church and the wider Anglican Communion and how many obstacles remain in the path of female priests and lay women.

In both the way it was created and the way in which it is unfolding, the class illuminates the ways in which successive generations of women are responding to the complex and evolving challenges that confront them in the church. The class was made possible by the donations of women who were in the first generation of female priests.

It includes women, like White, who came of

C R O S S I N G S Fall 2014 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

HATCHER AND HER contemporary, Kelly Aughenbaugh of the Diocese of Ohio, are navigating a church that in many ways is more open to their gifts than ever before.

Aughenbaugh grew up in a church with a female rector, worshipped after college at a cathedral at which a woman serves as dean, and has an aunt who is a priest. The first person who resisted her calling in any way, she says, was a Catholic man in his 80s whom she encountered while working in the chaplaincy office at a veterans’ center.

She says that growing up in a church in which female priests were “the norm” has led some of her contemporaries to develop a perspective on responding to injustice that is different than that of the generations that came before them. “In any relationship it is important to be genuine and get to know a person for the person God created them and not exploit the relationship to get to an end that I want,” Aughenbaugh says.

Te Paa Daniel, the New Zealand-born educator and advocate who is the first indigenous laywoman ever to be appointed to head an Anglican theological college, says tensions between generations sometimes manifest themselves in classes she has taught on the role on women in the church. But that hasn’t happened at CDSP. “The younger women are not at all dismissive of those who have historically struggled against sexism,” says Te Paa Daniel, who gave CDSP’s 2014 commencement address. “And they are respectful of those in the earlier generation who have been right on the edge of the struggles if not directly involved in them. I have had other classes where it was like, ‘Older women, get over yourselves.’”

Nonetheless, class members are aware

that women like Aughenbaugh and Hatcher are being shaped by experiences different from those that shaped women in their 40s like White and Caroline McCall, a lay woman from El Cerrito, California, who is pursuing a master’s degree in theological studies.

“Some women in their twenties and even their teens are pushing back against the word ‘feminist,’ says McCall, who has a background in management consulting and public policy and hopes to open a center for congregational development. “My theory is that “isms” are perceived as bad words. Feminism is a positive “ism,” but I don’t think it is heard that way by a generation that is growing up sensitive to all of the negative ‘isms’.

“In some ways, it might be harder to be a woman in the church now,” she adds, because discrimination is “more insidious.” Women aren’t treated equally, she says, but “it is easy to fool one’s self and be seduced by the trappings of equality.”

In previous careers, McCall and White both worked at jobs in which

Caroline McCall

“I wish this class were mandatory.”

— T e r r a n c e G o o d pa s t u r e (Left to right) Richard Hogue, Terrance Goodpasture and Spencer Hatcher.

even equality’s trappings weren’t readily apparent. “You learn to recognize discrimination when you see it,” says White, who worked as a radio journalist, earned a doctorate in clinical psychologist and then worked in the mental health and criminal justice systems. “When I was younger it was

Photo by Thomas Minczeski

obvious. They would promote men over women and were fairly unapologetic about it.

“In the church, they have to express a theological posture to justify just and unjust situations,” she says. “And in the real world, they don’t.”

Te Paa Daniel says she wants students to be able to identify sexism, no matter how many theological arguments are marshaled on its behalf. Class discussion often focuses on how women and members of other minority groups deal with discrimination and recently focused on strategies that stop short of open resistance, which can be risky for women and men in the ordination process.

“We were talking the other day about creativity under constraint, this idea that there are individuals who get creative despite the constraints that a system puts on them,” Hatcher says. “And then we were talking about whether that is a good thing.

Or whether sometimes you get so creative you overlook the constraints that are on you. It’s good to look at that issue on a systematic level.”

Photo by Thomas Minczeski

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THE WOMEN WHO raised the money that now supports the St. Margaret’s visiting professorship were particularly interested in the ways in which the church constrained, ignored and discriminated against women in all orders of ministry. The position their generosity has made possible is named for St. ­Margaret’s House, a Berkeley-based institution that trained deaconesses and lay women for ministry in the Episcopal Church from 1909-66.

“A bunch of us who had been out in the field for quite some time were really desirous of having a faculty person designated for feminist theology and women’s ministries,” says the Rev. Katherine M. Lehman (MDiv ’82, DMin ’99, DD ’06), former rector of St. Bede’s Episcopal Church in Menlo Park, California, who is now retired and living in Texas. “We wanted it to be a way of nurturing the relationship between ordained women and lay women as well as the relationships with men in both of those categories.”

The Rev. Dr. J. Rebecca Lyman, Garrett Professor Emerita of Church History at CDSP, was one of the leaders of the fundraising campaign. “I wanted to honor my foremothers,” she says. “I wanted to honor the altar guild, and my mother as a minister’s wife,

6 Kelly Aughenbaugh

and the woman behind the United Thank Offering, and all these women who did all this quiet serving all these years. I wanted to say, ‘Don’t pat lay ministry on the head when it is one of the engines of the church. It is the church.’”

Both women are aware that younger generations are growing up in a church in which some of the struggles of earlier decades

“Is it just that we need more women, or do we really need to look at what our structure requires of people?”

— S p e n c e r H at c h e r

have been won. But embedded in the feminist critique of sexism in the church is a broader critique of overweening authority, Lehman says. “What’s important about all of that is that women’s ways of doing the work and reflecting and interpreting the lived theology of our church have particular characteristics that differ significantly from the way men do it.”

“The game has changed,” Lyman says. “I don’t think anybody’s doing 70s consciousness raising anymore. But if you don’t want to talk about sexism, let’s talk about hierarchy. Let’s talk about clericalism. Let’s talk about economics.”

The question of whether a hierarchical system can be changed by female leaders has come up more than once in Te Paa Daniel’s class. “Does just increasing the number of women in a system created for and by men set women up to be at a disadvantage, to lose important pieces of themselves just because of the way that the system is developed?”

Hatcher asks. “Is the structure of the church problematic even if we have this structure filled with women? Is it just that we need more women, or do we really need to look at what our structure requires of people?”

THERE ARE THREE MEN in Te Paa Daniel’s class, and she has been delighted with their participation. “They are sincerely wanting to be part of the solution,” she says. “You can see the particular insight they bring. They aren’t looking for a checklist, like ‘If I do

Photo by Thomas Minczeski

C R O S S I N G S Fall 2014 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

these five things I will get my feminist ticket.’”

One of those men, Terrance Goodpasture, is a seminarian from the Diocese of San Joaquin, which has had to reorganize itself after a faction led by former bishop John David Schofield broke from the Episcopal Church over theological differences and fought to maintain control over much of the diocese’s property.

Schofield, who died in 2013, was an implacable opponent of ordaining women as well as gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians.

“I just thought it was important for me to have the correct vocabulary and understand the issues more deeply than I could see them by myself,” Goodpasture says. “I wish this class were mandatory.”

Like Hatcher, Goodpasture appreciates Te Paa Daniel’s gift for helping students to frame personal experiences and observations in a broader framework. “We were talking in our last class about how men used to be teachers, and when women started becoming teachers, the status of the job dropped a little bit and the pay

Photo by Thomas Minczeski

dropped,” he says. “I see that happening in our church. Those are the kind of issues I’d like to be able to stop somehow, or at least talk about openly.”

Te Paa Daniel is encouraged that students are beginning to find ways to speak about their experiences in personal terms. “Some of them are starting to take leadership,” she says, “to learn not only in abstract terms, not only the principles and theories of leadership, but to exercise it in a very real sense themselves and further, to also be subject to the critique of their peers. I think that is where many leaders often go awry, they lack the skill or the willingness to offer measured respectful critique, let alone the grace to receive it.”

“What we must now look at are ways to enable and facilitate and encourage the quality that we ourselves have got to constantly carry in the struggle, like grace, like gratitude, like hope,” she says. “Because if we just simply politicize the issue all the time, then I think we are losing.”

Photo by Thomas Minczeski

Jenny Te Paa Daniel, St. Margaret’s Visiting Professor of Women in Ministry

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Gyllian Davies makes a point to her classmates.

Church Divinity School of the Pacific • Fall 2014 C R O S S I N G S

An alumnus becomes an apostle Andrew Hybl is CDSP’s new director of admissions

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Andrew Hybl isn’t going to twist arms to get prospective seminarians to attend CDSP. But for those for whom it is a good fit, he’ll move heaven and earth to make it happen.

The Rev. Hybl is CDSP’s new director of admissions and recruiting, yet he admits that the word “recruit” gives him pause. He served in the Navy from 2004–2009, where much of his time was spent in the Middle East attached to a Marine ground combat unit.

“I’m not a big fan of the word ‘recruitment,’” Hybl said. “I remember a lot of false promises from military recruiters, saying it is all going to be fun and games, which is not what happens, especially during a time of war.”

He doesn’t need to sell the seminary, he said. “For prospective students desiring innovative theological education that prepares them for ministry in the 21st century, the seminary, the students and professors, they all sell themselves.”

Hybl remains dedicated to helping students discern their goals in theological education. “In some cases, it’s really about helping them

L u S ta n t o n L e ó n

understand that there are other options that might fit their ministry goals better,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to twist a student’s arm just to help us increase our numbers. It has to be a correct fit for the student and the school.”

What makes a good fit? Demonstrated leadership and creativity are two attributes that seem to form an attraction between potential seminarians and CDSP, Hybl said.

“The Bay Area in general is a place for thinking outside of the box.

A lot of students in the Bay Area don’t apply for a first job; they create one. I like to see that kind innovation in students who come to CDSP, to see them thinking outside the box.”

One of the challenges in the Bay Area can be the cost of living there.

“It’s no secret that the Bay Area is one of the most expensive places to live,” Hybl said. “For many students, finances are one of the biggest deciding factors. We’ve been doing a lot this summer to increase our scholarships and increase our ability to offer financial aid. Beginning in the fall of 2015, we will have many new scholarship opportunities.”

Hybl is committed to reducing student debt.

“I was fortunate to receive the

C R O S S I N G S Fall 2014 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

post 9-11, GI bill, which covered all costs during my theological education. For students who have significant student debt, it can become a distraction. The more I can help reduce that, the more they can focus on the ministry they are called to.”

Hybl’s own path to CDSP has had a few twists and turns. He grew up in South Carolina, moved to Arkansas and played soccer at the University of Central Arkansas, and graduated from the University of Arkansas in Little Rock. After serving on active duty, Hybl headed to seminary where, in 2011, he received his MDiv degree from the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. When he decided to pursue ministry in the Episcopal Church, his bishop recommended that he attend CDSP and complete a Certificate of Anglican Studies.

“Because I had the GI bill, I could have gone to school anywhere I wanted, yet I was drawn to CDSP by my experience taking classes here as part of my master’s degree program,” Hybl said. “My professors were instrumental in my formation. I knew I wanted to come here because I would receive an education that prepared me for effective ministry in the 21st century.

“My deepest experiences of

Photo by Thomas Minczeski

“My professors were instrumental in my formation.

I knew I wanted to come here because I would receive an education that prepared me for effective ministry in the 21st century.”

— The Rev. Andrew Hybl

formation occurred while a student at CDSP. I have always valued theological education and feel it is important. Therefore, when the opportunity arose for me to return to CDSP as director of admissions and recruitment, I was honored to do so.”

Hybl was ordained in 2012 and, prior to his current role at CDSP, served as a priest for two years at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Conway, Arkansas. He now lives in Oakland, California, with his wife and their young son, Oliver. They are anxiously awaiting the birth

of their daughter in December 2014.

Hybl hopes that his experiences as a priest and CDSP alum will benefit those who are considering attending the seminary.

“I think one thing that helps prospective students is that it hasn’t been that long ago when I was in their shoes,” Hybl said. “I’m very familiar with what they’re going through and will do everything I can to help in their discernment of theological education.”

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Reformer, relief worker,

C R O S S I N G S Fall 2014 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

A HOOLIGAN. That’s what the Rev. Kirsten Spalding has been called—she and thousands of others who have participated in protests this year in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She’s a hooligan who has witnessed violent protests, devastating floods, mudslides and crippling poverty. Through it all, she strove to be fully present to all that she witnessed, offering support wherever and however possible.

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“It was just a twist of fate that there were massive protests in Tuzla right after we arrived, so we became very engaged with the people who wanted to change the government here,” says Spalding, a 2012 CDSP MDiv graduate who lived in Tuzla for the 2013–14 academic year. “It became clear that I should be a deacon and priest serving the people of Tuzla.”

Spalding’s husband, Joseph Lough, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, received a yearlong Fulbright fellowship to write and teach at the University of Tuzla, so he, Spalding and their two sons, now ages 14 and 12, packed up and arrived in August 2013. Spalding saw

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witness…

Kirsten Spalding’s sojourn in a troubled land

Spalding says, “This portrait was taken by Munever Salihovic as part of an exhibit of portraits entitled: These Are the Faces of the Hooligans. My picture will be part of several thousand portraits of people who participated in the protests and plenums here in Tuzla. Our portraits will be juxtaposed with portraits of the corrupt politicians who have destroyed the local economy and taken profits for themselves and their cronies. The media called the protesters (like me) “Hooligans.” I am proud to wear the title and to be part of an uprising that makes clear who the real hooligans are.”

it as an opportunity to further her lifelong commitment to social justice and to continue discerning God’s call.

While in Tuzla, she worked as a facilitator and policy advisor for a group of Bosnian academics and young activists who shared an emancipatory vision for their country.

The February 2014 protests in the city “began as labor protests, sparked by layoffs, plant closures and unfair labor practices,” Spalding says. “But as the protests grew to include people who are not workers in unions, the focus of the protests shifted to what’s wrong with the economy, what’s wrong with the political system, and what it would take to change the fabric of society so that everyone in Tuzla might prosper.”

Then in May, relentless rains caused Spalding to expand her work.

“I had spent time with the poor, the unemployed and academics, trying to figure out how to move forward,” Spalding says. “Then on May 16, sud­­­denly we had flooding, the worst flooding in 100 years. It affected 40 percent of Bosnia and thousands and thousands of people lost their homes.

In Tuzla and the surrounding area, flooding caused more than 1,000 land­slides. After that, I focused on being with the people who had been affected by the floods and trying to support all the governmental and humanitarian groups who were pro­viding aid as well as the groups that were trying to change the ‘powers that be.’”

Spalding’s ministry was mostly one of presence.

“I think of my work as being a witness to the desperate situation of the people affected and helping all feel the Spirit moving with them towards a better future,” she says. “In my academic work at CDSP I developed my understanding of liberation

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Photo by Joe Lough

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theology. And now I weave that theology into my experience of God’s presence with people who are suffering. I hope that I can convey to the people among whom I work God’s hope that all people will live into the fullness of their potential.”

Social justice has long been ­Spalding’s call. As a college graduate, she went to South Africa in the mid 1980’s, when apartheid was at its height.

“I came back fundamentally changed,” she says, “knowing that I had to work for economic justice and racial equality.”

Prior to her work in the church, Spalding served as chief deputy treas­urer for the State of California; as chief of staff for the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO; as a law professor and chair of the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California, Berkeley; as an attorney representing labor unions and their members; and as a consultant to non-profit organizations in such areas as policy development, fundraising and community organizing.

“I know people were uncomfortable asking about my faith because faith has been something that has divided people here in the Balkans.”

— T h e R e v . K i r s t e n S pa l d i n g

She continues her policy consulting practice in the San Francisco Bay area, working with labor organizations and nonprofit organizations on social justice issues.

Spalding came to CDSP in 2007 when she realized she wanted to explore and deepen her faith.

She talked to her local priest, who

In February, Kirsten Spalding joined protests over economic injustice and government corruption.

recommended she take a course at CDSP, which just happened to be in her neighborhood. She took a course and went on to earn a Certificate of Theological Studies in 2007; continued as a part-time MDiv student, earning her degree in 2012, and was ordained a priest in June 2014.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a primarily Muslim country, but Tuzla is very secular, Spalding says. Her family worshiped in their home, and although Spalding wore her clergy collar every day in public, no one commented on it.

“I’ve asked, ‘How come no one asks about the collar?’ she says. “I wear it on the protest line, in community meetings, when I’m out visiting families affected by the floods. One person suggested that maybe people just couldn’t figure it out because they’ve never seen a woman priest.

Others say no, people would consider it private, just as you wouldn’t question a woman with a headscarf.

“I know people were uncomfortable asking about my faith because faith has been something that has divided people here in the Balkans.

C R O S S I N G S Fall 2014 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

I hope my presence has been in some way healing. Maybe in me, they can see a faith that speaks to God’s universal love, and interreligious cooperation—not to religious divisions and nationalism. The Balkan wars of the 1990’s involved communities of faith in genocidal hatred and violent deaths. I can’t begin to cure that trauma, but I can show that there is an alternative—a church that expresses radical welcome, and hopes for prosperity and justice for all people.”

Spalding says that CDSP remains important to her ministry.

“The theology of working in the world and not in the abstract, that’s what I got from CDSP,” she says.

In addition, the CDSP network helped support Spalding and her family in several ways during their time in Bosnia. “Members of the CDSP community have contributed to our relief fund, and some of the faculty and board members have contributed and

sent prayers. I know that even though I don’t have a church community physically with me in Tuzla, I have a community of clergy and lay colleagues all over the world who share with me in God’s work.

“The people I met at CDSP are doing such incredible ministry and our sense of mutual calling really sustains me. I know I’m not alone when Professor [Susanna] Singer sends a Facebook note, or when my classmate Carren Sheldon’s son sends greetings to my boys. It’s more than friendship, because we are shaped by one another. I can hear God’s call to me in the voices of my CDSP colleagues’ words of encouragement.

When I am unsure about whether I’m doing the right thing, I can ask, ‘What would you do?’ and know that CDSP colleagues will answer prayerfully.”

While in Tuzla, Spalding taught an online course on the Eucharist through CDSP’s Center for Anglican Learning and Leadership and led online spiritual reflections with congregants of Church of the Nativity, San Rafael, California, to which she returned in August. She also wrote

two blogs, one on travel and one on spirituality.

“In some ways the spiritual blog was my preaching,” she says. “In it, I reflected on where I was and what God was calling us all to do.”

Now Spalding is writing a book that she describes as theological reflections on the presence of God with God’s people as they create community in post-war Bosnia.

Before she left Tuzla last summer, she said, “I am so looking forward to being home and at the same time feeling there is so much to do here.

It’s painful to leave people you care about.

“Being in Tuzla confirmed my sense of priestly ministry in the world. Church is where God is—we create church, we create community with the people we are with.”

Above left, a woman whose home was devastated by flooding and landslides in May. At right, a government building burned during the February protests.

Photos by Kirsten Spalding

Speaking of Science CDSP’s dean says scientific inquiry deepens faith Photo by Emily Mitchell

In May, the Very Rev. Mark Richardson, CDSP’s dean and president, was awarded the 2014 Genesis Award from the Episcopal Network on Science, Technology and Faith. In making the award, the network cited Richardson’s “decades of scholarship, teaching, and leadership on issues related to science, technology, and faith.” In this interview with Jim Naughton, co-editor of Crossings, Richardson talks about the trepidation that people of faith sometimes feel when they attempt to assimilate scientific understandings into their religious worldviews, and how such insights can lead to fresh understandings of God and God’s creation.

Let’s begin with the simplest question: Why should people of faith pay attention to new developments in the sciences?

I see this as a question of integrity. If we take science seriously, we should want to find coherence across various descriptions of the world, from theology to physics. Arthur Peacocke [a British theologian, biochemist and Anglican priest] was a big influence on me. He said that the sciences explore the world that we in faith take to be God’s creation, and we ought to seek after coherence in our various descriptions.

Yet people of faith often approach scientific study with trepidation.

Why is that?

I think it raises the question of authority. How will I understand the role and meaning of those things I take to be authoritative for me as a

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Christian or a person of faith in light of the insights of other spheres of life I participate in? What trumps what? So many of us lean on popular renderings of the relationship between sci­­ence and religion, and we assume there is some level of conflict between the two. We assume, for example, that the sacred scriptures and the sciences are attempting to give answers to the same questions and that one is right and one is wrong.

You are suggesting that is not the case.

Yes. We should look at the genre of texts in scripture and ask what they are trying to do. What is the poetry of the psalmist trying to do at the affective level? Or what is the Torah doing at the level of moral promise and covenant? What are the histories trying to convey politically about the relation of Israel to its neighbors? These texts are not all trying to make assertions

about the state of the world, even if assumptions about the state of the world underlie their primary intent.

You have also argued that people of faith sometimes approach the sciences defensively and don’t allow the scientific knowledge to enhance their faith.

It used to be that the model of the church was that of the ark floating across the seas of history, and the job was to pull the masses into the boat because, after all, the world was the mass of perdition. And in a model like that, the locus of God’s salvation is the church. But if the world is the theater of God’s saving work and not the church, this ought to affect the disposition of the church toward the world. We have to see ourselves as a kind of servant and sacramental presence of God in the world, trusting that God’s purpose is the fulfillment and completion of the world, drawing it more fully into the divine life itself.

And if that is the case, we’d better know the world. I think it sets up a more generous attitude toward exploration and inquiry, setting up the expec­­­tation that my faith is enhanced, not destroyed, the more I know the world.

“Our moral and spiritual awakening is, from its origins, fragile and set in a complex environment. And if we accept that this is the case, it must have an impact on our theology.”

— The Very Rev. Mark Richardson

Yet science can challenge us to rethink our theological suppositions, as you said in your speech accepting the 2014 Genesis Award from the Episcopal Network on Science, Technology and Faith.

Yes, take evolution for instance.

Evolution has interesting theological consequences in light of some deep-rooted stuff in our theological tradition around The Fall and sin. My question is fall from what? If you have a creation that is billions of years in the making, where is the pristine garden? Instead, we probably came out of a complex jungle and are building on the shoulders of the death of many species to arrive at our fragile capacity for moral and spiritual awakening and questioning. In this way of thinking, our morality is more like that of a human child exploring than like an ideal human mind that has, in pride, fallen away from the

divine. I am aware that the literal rendering of the Fall story has long been abandoned for more symbolic renderings, but even these often carry forward a notion of a fall from some ideal condition as the context for God’s action in us and in the world.

So a worldview inspired by evolutionary theory in the sciences sets a very different spiritual tone. To use a phrase coined a century ago, we are more like rising apes than fallen angels. Our moral and spiritual awakening is, from its origins, fragile and set in a complex environment.

And if we accept that this is the case, it must have an impact on our theology. To this way of thinking, Christ is an exemplar, a pioneer who exposes divine love to us in a way that we are prepared to receive it.

I like William Temple’s way of thinking about this: Christ is the timely expression of what is always the case about God’s love and God’s intention to be present in costly ways to a material universe. This is quite a different emphasis from God needing to execute God’s son in some kind of holy calculus of justice and mercy. It is not that God had to execute God’s son in order to pay for our sin. It is a whole different orientation. This different way of conceiving the universe is reinforced by an evolutionary perspective on human origins.

What affect does this argument have on our understanding of evil?

We need to recognize the roots of evil in a new way. I think Augustine was brilliant when he described spiritual murkiness of the human condition as a way to describe something larger than our personal agency

Photo courtesy of Joseph Wolyniak of the Episcopal Network on Science, Technology and Faith

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behind the experience of alienation and sin.

But where does this murkiness come from?

Must we find the source of violence and death in some ideal state from which Adam fell? Even symbolically, this seems like a false start, based in the impulse to buffer a perfect and holy God from responsibility.

Instead, we can recognize that violence and death are built into the processes and structures of the uni­­verse and then conceive

a certain lifestyle. Somehow, this blocks us from appreciating the full force of what is happening. We have a divided consciousness and moral ambivalence on these matters.

The good news is that we have the resources in our faith—a vision of creation that can inspire moral conversion. We don’t have to invent anything—we can just look within our prayers for a vision that inspires change.

The church hasn’t had a lot to say on this issue.

“We lean on each other to find the resources to act morally and intelligently.”

— The Very Rev.Mark Richardson

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divine good­ness and holiness in a way that acknowledges this reality. Whoever answers that question has won theological Jeopardy!

The question of holding on to faith in the face of violence and suffering will not go away, and it is one of the greatest theological challenges. We can’t hide from it.

The notion that God wants to redeem creation, rather than simply humanity, throws an interesting light on the issue of climate change.

Environmental studies, over a wide range of applied sciences and evidential fields, is largely pointing in the same direction. Human activity is having a major impact on weather patterns, warming, changing atmosphere, imbalances in the soil and so forth. And one would think that we as a sacramental and incarnational people, holding that all kinds of material things are divine gifts—and yes, signs of grace—would find this alarming.

How could we not take it seriously?

As Joan Roughgarden, an evolutionary biologist at Stanford, said, “If you hug a tree, you hug a relative.” It’s the same DNA. It’s the same physical properties in various regimes of order. The interconnections are so profound that there is something almost nihilistic about taking the immediate conveniences of a way of life and letting them trump what is in evidence all around us.

I think the clear mandate to action competes against our long-habituated, shortsighted self-interest and our desire to preserve C R O S S I N G S Fall 2014 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

I think the thing that scares off the church on this question is its sheer complexity.

Climate science is an extremely complicated domain, and we sometimes feel inadequate to act with confidence. But our silence and inaction are themselves toxic; they suggest that no concerns or dangers are lurking and the status quo is just fine. I think deep down, we know it is not just fine.

How can a seminary help the church to find its voice?

I am interested in the church developing a kind of fearlessness about raising important questions for congregations to examine without feeling that our clergy have to be experts in all manner of important subjects related to moral and spiritual wellbeing. We do not expect clergy to be specialists in economics or foreign policy or the penal system. We should not expect them to be experts in the sciences. But we should expect the church not to be silent about the way that faith connects with these aspects of our common life.

We lean on each other to find the resources to act morally and intelligently. Our church leaders should be able to inspire the moral questions of great significance, then draw out and focus the gifts present in our church in addressing the challenges we share. In the end, it is a matter of mission and public ministry.

The Grea

Gibbs Society

Leaving Legacies In May, the George & Augusta Gibbs Society for Planned Giving welcomed nine new members at a luncheon at the deanery. The group first gathered at All Saints Chapel for Eucharist, at which they heard new Gibbs Society member Michael Corrigan give his senior sermon.

They join more than 300 existing members who have made planned gifts to support the ministry of CDSP. The George and August Gibbs Society was created to honor these individuals, who share a common bond of philanthropy and are recognized on the Gibbs Society donor wall in Easton Hall.

To learn more about joining the Gibbs Society by making a planned gift, please talk with Director of Development Patrick Delahunt at 510-204-0707 or via email at pdelahunt@cdsp.edu.

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Arthur Villarreal, Michael Corrigan ’15, Brenda Richardson, President Mark Richardson, Caroline Booth, Marnie Warner and Rock Warner at the Gibbs Society luncheon in May. Not pictured are Ben Wells ‘11 and Peter Haynes, also new Gibbs Society members.

The Greatest Generation In the last several months, CDSP has received a total of $335,000 in bequests and life insurance gifts from four members of the Greatest Generation—Americans who grew up during the Great Depression and fought World War II. The entire CDSP community is grateful to Blaine Gutmacher of Chandler, Arizona; George W. Masker of Salinas, California; Jean M. Pinder of Baltimore, Maryland; and Judith P. Yeakel of Langley,

Washington. May light perpetual shine upon them.

To learn more about the new scholarships made possible by these generous donors, please talk with the Rev. Andrew Hybl, director of recruitment and admissions, at 510-204-0715 or ahybl@cdsp.edu. To learn more about including CDSP in your estate plans, please talk with the Rev. Richard L. Schaper, CFP, gift planning advisor, at 415-381-8910 or richard@wealthsteward.net.

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Faculty News

In August, the CDSP faculty held a retreat to work on the seminary’s curriculum review process. The consultant to the project, Israel Galindo, associate dean for lifelong learning at Columbia Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, facilitated the retreat. The curriculum review process will be completed during the 2015-2016 academic year, and the new curriculum will be implemented in the fall of 2016.

Professor Bradley Burroughs, in cooperation with the Segerhammar Center for Faith and Culture at California Lutheran University, organized and hosted a visit to the GTU by Larry Rasmussen, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor Emeritus of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Dr. Rasmussen delivered a public lecture entitled “God, Ethics, and the Anthropocene.”

Professor George Emblom, director of chapel music and lecturer in church music, became the assistant professor of church music and director of chapel music on November 1.

Academic Dean Ruth Meyers noted that the change in George’s title “recognizes his 18 years of service to CDSP and was approved by the Board after a faculty review of his teaching, his compositions of hymns and service music, and his contributions to the wider church, all of which showed the quality and effectiveness of his work.”

Professor Marion Grau gave a workshop titled “On the Way

Throughout Europe: Pilgrimage as Earthbound Ritual Retraditioning” at last summer’s Conference of European University Chaplains.

Professor Lizette Larson-Miller has published an essay titled “Even at the Grave, We Make our Song”: The Divergence of Ecumenical Rememberings of the Dead” in the book “Liturgies in East and West: Ecumenical Relevance of Early Liturgical Development,” ed. Hans-Jürgen Feulner (LitVerlag GmbH & Co, Wien, 2014).

Academic Dean Ruth Meyers’s new book, titled “For the Common Good: Missional Worship for the Sake of the World,” was published in Novem­ber

by William B. Eerdmans. Stephen B. Bevans, SVD, who is Louis J. Luzbetak, SVD Professor of Mission and Culture at the Catholic Theological Union, writes “Ruth ­Meyers has dis­­­­tilled several decades of teaching, pastoral experience, scholarship, and personal reflection, and offers her readers in these pages a wonderful, faith-filled meditation on the missional heart of worship. ‘For the Common Good’ is a new classic—in liturgical studies and in missiology as well.”

Professor Emeritus Louis Weil taught in June in the graduate summer program at Sewanee. In addition to his course on the role of the presider at the Eucharist, he also gave a public lecture on ‘The Future of Anglican Liturgy.’ The talk will be published in the fall issue of the Sewanee Theological Review.

IN MEMORIAM • Professor James Jones The Rev. James Jones, former director of field education and professor of homiletics at CDSP, died on April 26.

Professor Donn Morgan writes, “Leaving a successful business career to prepare for ordained ministry, Jim graduated from CDSP in 1964. After a few years of parish ministry he returned to the seminary to start up a new field education program in 1972. In the 1980’s he became professor of homi­letics, a position he held until his retire­ment in 1991. Among other con­­tributions Jim made to CDSP, he served as vice dean and was instrumental in getting CDSP to use Spanish in occasional worship. The school gave him the Doctor of Divinity degree, honoris causa, after his retirement.”

Our Active Alums

The Rt. Rev. Brian N. Prior ’87, the Rev. John William Wauters ’80, Dorothy Walrath ’61, and the Rt. Rev. Brian Thom ’87 were awarded honorary degrees at Alumni Convocation in October.

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The Rev. Katharine Flexer ’97 has been chosen as the 11th rector of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a 207-year-old Episcopal church. She is the first woman to hold the position.

Flexer, who begins her new position on December 14, is currently rector of The Episcopal Church in Almaden, San Jose, California.

The Rev. Marcia Ledford ’13 has launched a project called “The Lazarus Lives! Photo Exhibit: God and Youth on Detroit Streets” that was awarded a special United Thank Offering Grant in honor of the organization’s 125th anniversary. The project will provide an opportunity for lesbian, gay, biattractional and transgender (LGBT) youth in Detroit to tell their stories of their experiences with God on the streets through a photographic exhibit.

The Rev. Liz Tichenor ’12, MA ’13 became associate rector of All Souls Episcopal Church in Berkeley in August. She was previously resident chaplain at Camp Galilee, the Episcopal Camp in the Diocese of Nevada, and associate rector for children, youth and families at Trinity Episcopal Church in Reno.

The Rev. Rob Schoeck ’14 became the associate at St. James Episcopal Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in July. He will be ordained to the priesthood in January.

The Rev. Twila Smith ’14 became missioner at the Episcopal Church of the Mediator in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in August.

Jay Walton ’14 became assistant to the rector at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Maple Glen, Pennsylvania, in July.

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Giving Tuesday 20

On December 2, CDSP students participated in Giving Tuesday, an initiative designed to provide a charitable alternative to the start of the Christmas shopping season on Black Friday and its online shopping counterpart, Cyber Monday.

In photos and a YouTube video using the hashtag #cdspgivingtuesday, students asked CDSP faculty, staff, students and friends to use their personal social media accounts to spread the word about the good work happening at CDSP and to spur online donations.

“Giving Tuesday isn’t about asking students for money,” says Spencer Hatcher ’16, who helped lead the student campaign. “It’s about using social media to raise awareness of what donations to CDSP support. Our networks together are much bigger than any of our networks individually.”

It’s not too late to donate to CDSP’s annual fund online. Visit www.cdsp.edu and use the “Giving” link.

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THINK Like a Business What do culture and information technology have in common?

by

A my V ogelsang , MBA

Vice President for Finance and Operations

In 1982 seven people in the Chicago area died after taking Tylenol. Within hours, Tylenol all over the country had been taken off the shelves—­without anyone having an ‘emergency response plan.’ Such is the power of culture! Drug store owners the country over knew that Johnson & Johnson would take the hit for lost product rather than have their reputation tainted. It was their brand.

It was their reputation. It was their culture.

I did some studying of institutional cultures a few years ago on

behalf of the technology company I was working with at the time. What I learned is that companies that had done well in the market to that point—Hewlett Packard, Intel, IBM, Apple, Google—all worked at building and sustaining their cultures.

The dress code at IBM is household knowledge. HP always hires inexperienced but bright employees because they want to break them in. Google values innovation so much that they invest 20% of their employees’ salaries in doing unguided work.

Culture drives the product. Culture in­­­structs decision-making when the boss is not around. Culture is worth money. Ask Apple.

At the moment, both the Episcopal Church and CDSP have an opportunity to re-examine and refine our cultures. What does it mean to be part of the Episcopal Church? What does it mean to be an Episcopal seminary? How do we instruct seminarians to lead ‘outside the walls of the church?’ And what does it mean to be ecumenical and Episcopal at the same time?

At CDSP, we are in the final stages of implementing a major redesign of our technological infrastructure and business systems. To use an automotive analogy, we ripped out the engine and the transmission, reinforced the frame of the car to be safer, and rebuilt all of the electrical and mechanical systems before reinstalling a completely rebuilt engine

and transmission. It’s electric now.

More torque, greater fuel efficiency.

Our new infrastructure makes us more sustainable. If we need more speed or storage space or power, we can literally dial it up (or down) overnight. And all of this comes at a lower cost than we have been paying previously.

Our new infrastructure makes us more able to work remotely because we can now sign on from anywhere and we aren’t constrained by the physical box that holds our programs.

We can instant message with our newest employee while she meets with colleagues in southern California.

Our students can register and pay from anywhere in the world.

We have a lot of new routines to absorb and new reports to learn, but within a year or so, we will have changed the way we do business. We will have more meetings online, and we’re already growing comfortable with sharing a classroom with students in another state.

Indeed our new infrastructure supports us in claiming the culture to which we aspire and enhances our ability to nurture authentic connections in Asia and Europe. We are teaching our students to serve in a technological, global world. We are aligning our institution with the culture we intend.

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