CDSP Crossings Spring 2014

Jenny Te Paa-Daniel, a pioneering theological educator, will give CDSP’s commencement address on May 23, and be a visiting professor in the Women in Ministry program in Fall ’14. Profile, page 2.

SPRING 2014

Hands across the water The CDSP-Ming Hua partnership

Celtic Cross Society Making mission happen in a parking lot

Necessary Things The Richard Hooker Reading Group

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Challenger

Letter from the Dean

It is a great pleasure to welcome you to this issue of Crossings. I found it exciting, personally, to read over the stories and say to myself, “Yes, this is a slice of life at CDSP, this is us.” So I want to offer my own angle on how I find CDSP in these features.

Have you ever read the 16th century theologian, Richard Hooker—on your own?

When you do you recognize first that you are entering another era of English prose, then, that you are encountering one of the great luminaries of Christian tradition. But it’s hard going, and not best done on one’s own.

That’s the wisdom of the Richard Hooker reading group at CDSP you will read about in this issue. They are reading together, over lunch, out loud, encountering the strangeness and the insight, discovering links and gaps between now and then. This activity, started

by Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski several years ago, has gotten some of us at CDSP hooked on Hooker, and it is exemplary of the kind of critical reflective skills one hopes to gain in community life at seminary.

What do UC Berkeley football and CDSP have in common? I hope you will enjoy, also, the story about our parking lot on the day of Cal football games. For years seminarians have collected money for the Celtic Cross Society from those desperate to find parking on game day. The collection goes to the Celtic Cross Society’s mission fund. But this year there was a new twist. Students in our lot struck up con­versations with parkers, telling them what their parking fare would do. This intrigued the fans, and gave a whole new character to tailgate conversation. It’s a new way of meeting and relating to the public in our neighborhood, and just one of the ways in which life at CDSP prepares students for ministry.

A similar aspect of student life at CDSP is the new stewardship campaign our students initiated on behalf of theological education.

From within their own ranks they pledged over $6,500, and over 330 hours of service to the school. Considering the financial pressures students are under these days, you realize something else is going on here. They are practicing in this community the kind of lead­er­­

ship they wish to offer in their futures—they are ‘walking the talk’. It is such a wonderful, innovative, and inspiring thing to witness.

I commend the beautiful feature stories about Dr. Jenny Te Paa-Daniel from New Zealand, and about Ming Hua in Hong Kong, our companion school. They highlight our growing activities in reaching out to the global Anglican community beginning in the Pacific basin where we are located. Plans are underway to exchange students and clergy across the waters between Hong Kong and Berkeley, something Professor John Kater has pioneered for many years. At the same time, through smart classroom technology, we are planning to take our respective classrooms to each other through online exchanges. At commence­ ment Jenny Te Paa-Daniel will represent this commitment to reach beyond our borders, to discover ourselves in the face of others –whether it be in Panama, Hong Kong, or other places that become our growing edge.

I am delighted that William Stafford, a distinguished leader in our church and in theological education, will be with us in the classroom next year. This will be a very rich addition to the CDSP community and I commend the story about him in this magazine.

We also welcome with enthusiasm the arrival of Patrick Delahunt as the new director of institutional advancement. He brings dedication and experience in advancement from several years at Stanford Medical School and University of California, San Francisco.

Finally, a tribute to our Board of Trustees, which recently took creative steps to make CDSP financially sustainable. The steps include investing in a new IT and administrative infra­ structure, and pursuing new possibilities in leasing excess capacity in our institutional and residential property.

It is such a pleasure to serve with an administration and staff that give so faithfully and competently to this school, with faculty who not only offer their considerable expertise but willingly venture with students into new territory, and with students who are showing us glimpses of ministry in the church’s future.

— T he V ery R ev . W. M ark R ichardson , P h D President and Dean

From generation to generation

Jenny Te Paa-Daniel’s commitment to the voiceless and the marginalized has made her one of the most influential women in the Anglican Communion

Sally Jean Lash’s generous gift to CDSP honors her family’s past while supporting the seminary in training leaders for the church’s future.

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Building a partnership on the Pacific Rim Shuttling students and faculty across an ocean, CDSP and Ming Hua Theological College in Hong Kong are developing a cross-cultural friendship.

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Parking cars, Opening hearts How the Celtic Cross Society transformed business transactions into deep conversations and raised money for mission in the process.

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Back in class William Stafford, former Sewanee dean, is thrilled to be back in the classroom as visiting professor of church history at CDSP.

Crossings SPRING 2014

Richard Hooker is an essential Anglican theologian, but his work is difficult to tackle on one’s own: enter CDSP’s Richard Hooker Reading Group.

Faculty News Keeping up with CDSP’s prolific and peripatetic faculty

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Our Active Alums Photo by Thomas Minczeski

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When the reading gets tough, the tough form a reading group

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New calls, new books and other news of our alums.

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“Think more like a business” The Very Rev. W. Mark Richardson, Dean and President Editorial: Canticle Communications Photography: Herb Gunn, Thomas Minczeski, Richard Wheeler 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.

For additional print copies, e-mail communications@cdsp.edu.

Crossings also is published as a pdf online, at www.cdsp.edu/news/crossings, with archive copies available.

We want to know what you think of our magazine.

Please send your comments, story ideas and suggestions to communications@cdsp.edu

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.

Go Green with CDSP: Email communications@cdsp.edu to subscribe to our monthly email newsletter, and stay connected on Facebook at /cdspfans, on Twitter @cdsptweets, and on Instagram @cdspstudent.

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Photo by Herb Gunn

Jenny Te Paa-Daniel at the 77th General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 2012.

Hard truths graciously told The prophetic career of Jenny Te Paa-Daniel by

Jim Naughton

FROM THE TIME that she first became involved in the church of her native New Zealand, Jenny Te Paa-Daniel had known that women had to fight to make themselves heard. Nonetheless, the 2008 Lambeth Conference came as something of an unpleasant surprise.

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The campus of the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, was alive with bishops, theologians and other Anglican luminaries, but what struck Te Paa-Daniel, who was among those leading Bible studies at the conference, was how overwhelmingly male the gathering felt. “Other than the dozen or so women bishops and the predictably dutiful spouses club, women were in short supply,” she said in a recent speech.

Chagrined, she did a quick calculation and came up with some distressing numbers. Among the Communion’s international decision-making bodies, there were 30 to 35 women in positions of genuine leadership and almost 900 men. ‘’In other words, fifty percent of the ecclesiastical household comprise maybe just three percent of the leadership,” Te Paa-Daniel said. “This is hardly an impressive, or indeed I would assert, an acceptable score for an institution which, alongside all other Christian churches … so readily uses the rhetoric of God’s justice; of compassion, mercy, kindness; or recognizing that we are all created equally in God’s image and so on.”

Te Paa-Daniel’s activism on behalf of women was not born in that moment. Her willingness to speak her convictions has made her perhaps the best-known lay woman in the Anglican Communion. But her commitment to help women, especially lay women, find their voice was strengthened.

“There is no limit to the power that lay women can wield once they have the courage,” she says. “Part of the mission I have felt in life is to be a voice to challenge unjustly constituted authority, to be fearless about that. That is a strength of C R O S S I N G S Spring 2014 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

all lay people, that we can be fearless and challenge the misuse of authority, which is rampant throughout the world.”

There’s little wonder that when the Very Rev. Mark Richardson, CDSP’s dean and president, began to consider who should be the first visiting scholar in the seminary’s new Women in Ministry program, Te PaaDaniel’s name sprang immediately to mind.

“She is personally engaging and a passionate communicator,” Richardson said. “She is an advocate of a strong Anglican Communion that recognizes the gifts of all regions and cultures within the communion.

She presses toward full inclusion of women in the church, especially in parts of the world and church where this inclusion has not been fully recognized. She is a strong advocate of theological education for all.”

He was so certain that she was the right person to launch a program “designed to bring many and varied exemplars of women in ministry to the CDSP community for a semester” that he invited her to deliver CDSP’s commencement address in May. When she finishes a previous teaching commitment in New Zealand, she will join the CDSP community for the semester that begins in late August.

“We are eager to have her mix

with students and faculty to broaden perspectives on church, ministry and culture, and be a living example of the leadership of women in the church,” Richardson said. “When you see these issues from another culture, how does it place in relief the same issues in one’s own culture? We have contextual studies for understanding theology, and Jenny’s presence on campus will give a personal dimension to this.”

Te Paa-Daniel is no stranger to CDSP. She earned her PhD from the Graduate Theological Union in 2001.

While living and studying in ­Berkeley, she made CDSP her denominational home. She counts some of the faculty and students she met in those years among her most influential colleagues and friends, men and women such as the Rev. John Kater, professor emeritus of ministry development, the Rev. J. Rebecca Lyman, CDSP’s Garrett Professor Emerita of Church History, the Rev. L. William Countryman, Sherman E. Johnson Professor Emeritus in Biblical Studies, Dr. Donn Morgan, former dean and president of CDSP, Alda Morgan, director of continuing education, and especially Judith Berling, former dean of the GTU and the woman whom Te Paa-Daniel describes as “the extraordinarily patient chair of my PhD committee.”

She says she is looking forward to being back on Holy Hill, teaching a course, running a seminar series on women’s leadership, and participating in the day-to-day life of the CDSP community.

Te Paa-Daniel says she’d also like to help CDSP to include the indigenous people of the Pacific basin more fully in the life of the seminary.

“It’s not just picking the poor Poly­ nesians out of the Pacific,” she says.

“There is so much the church in Polynesia could contribute, and if I could broker some of that, that would seem like a worthy contribution.”

The Rev. Ruth Meyers, CDSP’s academic dean, says, “As a Maori lay woman, Jenny brings a distinctive voice to Anglican theological reflection. She knows the challenges of bridging cultures and is well equipped to foster cross-cultural understanding. Through her leadership in the Anglican Communion, she is familiar with the issues confronting women in leadership. I look forward to the insights she will offer the CDSP community not only in her teaching but also in informal conversations.”

While Te Paa-Daniel’s prominence in the Anglican Communion has allowed her to play a role in inter­ national issues, her involvement in the church began close to home.

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

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Photo courtesy of Anglican Communion News Service

Te Paa-Daniel with then-Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams at the Anglican Consultative Council in 2012.

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Her experiences of growing up Maori in the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia persuaded her at an early age that the church was as captive to racial, gender and class-based prejudices as any secular institution. What her church needs, she said, is “a shared post­colonial commitment to ‘let the former indigenous captives go free,’ but with an eye to ensuring those thus freed are not then tempted or enabled to replicate the practice of bondage within their own communities.” The postcolonial phenomenon of what she calls “enhanced male dominated tribalism” is one she has written about extensively.

Te Paa-Daniel was the first Maori person to complete an academic degree in theology at the University of Auckland. Her ­masters thesis, also written at the University of Auckland, traced the historical experience of theological education for Maori students from 1843 to 1990, and revealed clear evidence of structural injustice that made it ­difficult for Maori people to succeed in ­theological education. Her doctoral dissertation explored the impact of race-based politics on theological education and proposed a model for c­ ulturally diverse and comprehensively ­inclusive theological education for the ­Anglican Communion.

“I propose a model that effectively addresses racial injustice without “Part of the mission I have felt in unduly pro­tecting or life is to be a voice to challenge valorizing cultural or ethnic traditions,” she unjustly constituted authority, to wrote. “It is my hope be fearless about that.” that by invoking a ­theo­retical discourse — Jenny Te Paa-Daniel ground­ed in the languages of political strug­ gle and yet mediated by the moral imperatives inherent in theological wisdom, that this dissertation will serve as a prophetic instrument in a world where daily communities are being systematically overwhelmed by race hatred and ethnic violence.”

In 1995, at the age of 41, she was appointed Ahorangi or principal of Te Rau Kahikatea, a constituent of the College of St. John the Evangelist in Auckland, making her the first single, indigenous lay woman C R O S S I N G S Spring 2014 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

to lead a theological college in the Anglican Communion.

By the time she enrolled at the GTU, Te Paa-Daniel was already a member of her church’s General Synod and deeply immersed in issues of justice and equality in the wider communion, serving as the convener of the International Anglican Peace and Justice Network, as a member of the Anglican Indigenous Network and the International Anglican Women’s Network.

Her friend Bonnie Anderson, former president of the Episcopal Church’s House of Deputies, says Te Paa-Daniel’s gracious manner makes her an especially effective trailblazer. “She has a way about her that is gentle and strong at the same time,” says Anderson who received an honorary doctorate from CDSP last year. “I’ve never seen anybody be so truthful and speak so honestly to people in powerful positions and walk away from that with them thanking her.”

These qualities have served her well as the convener of the International Anglican Peace and Justice Network, and as a member of the Anglican Indigenous Network and the International Anglican Women’s Network. So have the relationships that began at the GTU. “One of the things that touches me always are the ways that enduring friendships with those who have been through theological college together can create the most amazing political alliances,” she says, citing the example of the Rev. Brian Grieves, who retired in 2009 after 21 years directing peace and justice ministries for the Episcopal Church, and the Rev. Naim Ateek, a Palestinian priest who is the founder and president of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.

Through her friendship with the two priests, Te Paa-Daniel learned that they had met and become friends themselves at CDSP before working closely together for more than three decades. Under Grieves’ leadership, the Episcopal Church often worked closely with Sabeel and was among the Christian denominations most critical of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Since Grieves’ retirement, the church has rethought this position and adopted a policy of targeted investment in those areas.

“Ask yourself why Brian was so passionate about issues of Palestine,” said Te Paa-Daniel, an advocate for economic sanctions against Israeli companies that benefit from the occupation. “It’s more than just political alliance. These are deep important and abiding friendships between those called to ministry to be servant leaders of God’s missional purposes.

“When I think of my own time at the GTU, I treasure the enduring friendships more deeply than anything else. … And you are then able to put those friendships to work in strategic ways for the betterment of the communion. I think that is sometimes the political reality that students are probably least prepared for. But those friendships formed are the treasures of most enduring substance.”

Te Paa-Daniel won a special place in the hearts of many Episcopalians when she spoke to the church’s House of Deputies at the 2009 General Convention in Anaheim.

Six years earlier, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, then the Archbishop of Canterbury, had appointed her to the Lambeth Commission, a group of leaders of varying theological persuasions from across the Anglican Communion that he had assembled in hopes of finding a way through the controversy that began when the Episcopal Church ordained the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as bishop of New Hampshire.

The commission produced the Windsor Report, which criticized the Episcopal Church for failing to consult more broadly within the Communion before consecrating Robinson as a bishop and recommended a moratorium on the consecration of gay and lesbian clergy to the episcopacy.

At the 2006 General Convention, working under the impression that the church’s position in the Anglican Communion was in jeopardy, bishops and deputies responded to the report

by passing a resolution that effectively prohibited individuals whose “manner of life” would pose a challenge to the wider Communion from being consecrated as bishops.

The backlash against this measure began almost immediately, and Te Paa-Daniel, an advocate for LGBT “I propose a model that effectively addresses racial injustice without unduly protecting or valorizing cultural or ethnic traditions.”

— Jenny Te Paa-Daniel

people in the Communion, was also struggling to uphold the very tenuous unanimity which undergirded the Commission’s own acceptance of the Windsor Report. The Lambeth Commission, she said, had proceeded without sufficient knowledge of the Episcopal Church’s 30-year consideration of LGBT issues, its practice of bringing guests from all over the Anglican Communion to its convention, and the fact that the Most Rev. Frank Griswold, who had been presiding bishop when Robinson was

elected, did not have the authority to stop the consecration unilaterally.

She had also learned that the movement to remove the Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion and replace it with a theologically conservative group that had broken away from the church was being funded by foundations and individuals who were prominent financial backers of the conservative wing of the American culture wars.

Acquainted therefore with what she referred to as “the sordid political realities,” she no longer believed that a compromise that would allow reasoned consideration of the place of LGBT people in the Communion was likely.

Bonnie Anderson felt the House of Deputies was discouraged about the Episcopal Church’s place in the Communion, angry about how its actions had been portrayed, and ­confused about how to proceed.

“What we had heard from Lambeth, and what we had heard going around in the Communion, was all about the imperialism with which we acted and the feeling that ‘There goes the Episcopal Church again, just flexing their muscles and going against the grain of the Communion,’” ­Anderson said.

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Te Paa-Daniel at the 2008 Lambeth Conference.

“Clerical men had shaped this negative view of our actions, and I thought a lay Indigenous woman would give the House a different perspective and perhaps refresh their courage.”

In a packed afternoon session, Te PaaDaniel said she came to the House to share her regrets, as a member of the panel, that the Lambeth Commission had never received an accurate understanding of how the Episcopal Church made its decisions.

“As a result of that crucial gap in knowledge and understanding, it is my belief that the very unfair, in fact, the odious myth of ‘The Episcopal Church acting (in the matter of the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson) with typical unchecked U.S. imperialism,’ was more readily enabled and abetted to grow wings and fly unchecked for way too long across the reaches of the Anglican ­Communion,” she said.

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Photo by Herb Gunn

“I’ve never seen anybody be so truthful and speak so honestly to people in powerful positions and walk away from that with them thanking her.”

— Bonnie Anderson

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

“We realized, to our utterly deserved chagrin, that we had perhaps failed, albeit inadvertently, to prevent something of the unprecedented vilification of the Episcopal Church and especially of its leadership that inevitably resulted.

“Your generosity of spirit in spite of all you have suffered so unjustly and unnecessarily over the past few years is just so perfectly admirable. That you continue with such magnanimity to gather international friends, to share with us so openly, so willingly all that you do so formidably, so precisely, so efficiently and so compassionately is a gift offering of such magnitude that it seems so utterly insufficient for me to simply say thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Many deputies were in tears when she finished speaking.

“I was deeply moved by Jenny’s speech,” Meyers, then a deputy from the Diocese of Chicago, said. “Though late in the day, the House was still as they listened, and as her remarks continued, many of us were in tears.

Here was a sister in Christ, acknowledging the suffering we had experienced as we were vilified in the Anglican Communion and standing in solidarity with us. She helped the deputies know that we had allies in the Anglican Communion and gave us confidence to move ahead with authorizing the development of resources for blessing same-sex relationships and creating the possibility of ordaining to the episcopacy gays and lesbians in lifelong committed relationships.”

The convention passed two resolutions that ended the moratorium on consecrating LGBT candidates, and in December 2009, the Rev. Mary Glasspool, a lesbian, was elected suffragan bishop of the Diocese of Los Angeles.

President Richardson says that Te Paa-­ Daniel’s visit will give the CDSP community and the wider church a glimpse into an initiative that could be important to the seminary’s future. The plan, he said, is to develop “short presentations by leaders around the globe in our Communion on topics relevant to our teaching mission.”

A conversation with Te Paa-Daniel is a veritable catalog of topics relevant to ­Christian discipleship in the 21st century, especially for those who are moved by the theology of liberation.

“My theology is deeply informed certainly by an intellectual appreciation of the thinking

“When I think of my own time at the GTU, I treasure the enduring friendships more deeply than anything else. …

And you are then able to put those friendships to work in strategic ways for the betterment of the Communion.”

— Jenny Te Paa-Daniel

and writing of those whose gift to the academy is indeed priceless,” she said. “But it is also as abundantly informed by my heartfelt engagement with the peoples of God’s world, particularly by those whose struggles for dignity and decency continue to outrage and offend and thus compel me to speak and act as I do.”

In the five years since her speech to the General Convention, the Most Rev. Justin Welby has succeeded Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury, but the Communion has not made much progress either in affirming the lives and ministries of its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members, or in advancing the status of women or the laity in Anglican leadership.

“I think we are just in a kind of happy stasis place now,” she said.

“We haven’t harnessed by any means the talents of people throughout the Anglican Communion. A lot of people are just holding their breath and waiting for the next piece.”

She is also dismayed by what she views as the difficulty in giving West­­ern audiences an accurate sense of the toll that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are taking on Palestinians. She and Brian Grieves were part of a delegation representing 23 provinces of the Anglican Communion that visited Israel and the territories in 2004 and brought a resolution to the Anglican Consultative Council two years later calling on the 38 provinces of the Communion to divestment from Israel. The ACC “welcomed” the report, but did not call for divestment.

“We all need a deep understanding of what is really going on in

Palestine,” she said. “I have watched Naim Ateek and many other courageous Palestinian Christians, together with countless Jewish allies, try to explain the current reality, but the counter discrediting lobby is incredibly well organized and utterly condemnatory. The quality, therefore, of mutually respectful engaged conversation is what is missing.”

On the role of women in the Anglican Communion, her feelings are thoroughly mixed. The African provinces of the Communion are beset by gender politics, she says, as is the Church of England, which is making extremely slow progress in ordaining women to the episcopacy.

In her own church she has seen “stunningly competent women” by­­ passed for episcopal and other senior leadership roles in favor of women from other countries who take what she views as a more clerically-preoccupied approach to their work.

“So many provinces in the Anglican Communion look to the church in New Zealand as an icon of liberalism, but our current reality is undeserving of such adulation,” she said.

“Much of that reality is hidden within our un-interrogated race politics, our inevitable gender politics and our post-colonial uncertainty.

“Women must decide that, yes, we must take the gender justice conversation seriously—and the numbers throughout the communion are a disgrace—but then the qualitative nature of leadership also needs to be part of the debate. Women just for women’s sake? We have to do better than that.”

Although she is known in the Anglican Communion for her work as an advocate, there has always been a

hands-on aspect to Te Paa-Daniel’s ministry, much of which took place out of public view in her native New Zealand. That will be the case, increasingly, after her time at CDSP. In December 2012, she married Roro Daniel, a medical doctor who has worked throughout the South Pacific. “Our respective calls to ministry kept us geographically apart over the years,” she says. “Our shared decision to modify our professional commitments was taken in order that we could enjoy our elder years together!” The couple lives now both in Auckland, New Zealand and on Aitutaki in the Cook Islands Ask her where she finds hope, and after praising President Richardson for his energy and willingness to meet the challenges facing Episcopal seminaries head on, she turns to her experience this spring, teaching in the Auckland branch of Te Whare Wananga O Aotearoa, an indigenous institution that offers a higher education to students from groups that have been historically disadvantaged.

The name means the place of learning.

“You go to where the needs are the greatest,” she said. “They are in a community I love, and I love what they are trying to achieve and the integrity of doing what they are doing.”

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Friends in Hong Kong CDSP and Ming Hua Theological College cultivate a Pacific Rim partnership by

L u S ta n t o n L e ó n

Almost 7,000 miles of ocean separate CDSP from Ming Hua Theological College in Hong Kong, but in significant ways, the two seminaries are drawing closer all the time.

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What began several years ago as a casual relationship is fast becoming a committed partnership, as the two seminaries shuttle students and faculty back and forth across the Pacific Ocean in what may be the closest relationship between an Episcopal seminary and an Asian counterpart.

“CDSP has a special place in Hong Kong’s heart,” said Gareth Jones, prin­ cipal of Ming Hua. “We think alike as institutions about things like liturgy, the Anglican Communion, and faith in today’s world. It really is a very natural, three-dimensional relationship.”

That relationship is deepening quickly, as the two seminaries raise money for a shared, cross-cultural educational program that would institute formal student and faculty exchanges, and provide continuing education opportunities for clergy in Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui (the Hong Kong Anglican Church).

“For well over a decade our messaging has promoted our position on the Pacific basin as a potential gateway to Asian Christianity,” said the Very Rev. Mark Richardson, president C R O S S I N G S Spring 2014 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

and dean of CDSP, who visited Hong Kong in March. “We are formalizing an exchange so we can benefit from the wider culture of the Anglican Communion and better understand ourselves through the cultural similarities and differences.”

During his trip, Richardson was formally welcomed at a dinner in his honor hosted by the Most Rev. Paul Kwong, archbishop and primate of Hong Kong, who is both a CDSP alumnus (MDiv ’82) and a trustee. At Jones’ invitation, Richardson spoke to a gathering of laity and met with ordinands from Ming Hua. He also spoke to the clergy of the province at a gathering hosted by Kwong and presided and preached at Ming Hua’s community Eucharist.

“It was exhilarating to be immersed in the life of another province of the Communion, and to learn first hand about the challenges and opportunities in Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia,” Richardson said. “Anglicans in the United States and Asia are poised to take their relationships to deeper and more mutually enriching levels.”

During a visit to Hong Kong two years ago, Richardson also met with the principals of Chinese seminaries in both Shanghai and Nanjing. “Both schools expressed interest in develop­ ing continuing education for clergy in ministry development,” he said. The earlier trip also included a visit to

Gareth Jones and Ming Hua students

“The development that occurs within a culture that is clearly not our own is a rich part of a student’s formation.”

— Mark Richardson

Taiwan, where Richardson met with Bishop David Lai to consider the potential for offering the Anglican Studies certificate and Doctor of Ministry degree to students and clergy from the Diocese of Taiwan.

Richardson’s most recent trip strengthened the already hearty relationship between CDSP and Ming Hua and Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui. The Rev. John Kater, CDSP’s professor emeritus of ministry development, teaches courses at Ming Hua every year, and Donn Morgan, president and dean of CDSP from 1995–2010, frequently serves as a visiting professor at the seminary.

Earlier this year, the Rev. Ruth Meyers, CDSP’s dean of academic affairs, made her first trip to Ming Hua, and CDSP junior Reed Loy has been awarded a grant to spend seven weeks working in the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui this summer as a cultural exchange student.

“The development that occurs within a culture that is clearly not our own is a rich part of a student’s

formation,” said Richardson. “This is a manifestation of our dedication at CDSP to cross-cultural understanding as added value to ministry.”

Archbishop Kwong agreed, saying that the three years he spent at CDSP had a profound effect on his ministry.

“My experience there couldn’t have been better,” he said. “CDSP is unique. The faculty was multi-cultural, even then, and being exposed to that has been a great asset to my ministry.

It is a very attractive seminary to those of us in Hong Kong because it is on the Pacific Rim and closer than most to our part of the world. Also, in the Bay Area, there is a huge population of Chinese cultures.

“I am very excited about the possibility of a partnership with CDSP.” In addition to the archbishop, the Rev. Lam Chun Wai, vice principal at Ming Hua and the Rev. Philip Wickeri, a Ming Hua faculty member, are also CDSP alumni. Lam received his DMin from CDSP last year, and Wickeri received his DD in 2005.

Jones, who has visited CDSP sev­­

eral times—most recently in February 2014—said, “CDSP is particularly good at what I call generous Anglicanism, an open and welcoming understanding of our Communion family. Having Mark Richardson as dean and president has deepened the theology of that understanding considerably.”

Forging ties that bind People on both sides of the Pacific point to Kater as the face of the rela­ tionship between Ming Hua and CDSP. “John Kater has been a huge asset for us,” Kwong said. “He is respected in Hong Kong, and his ­lectures are always well received.”

Kater says the relationship began “almost by accident,” recalling that in 2005 the Rev. Dorothy Lau graduated from CDSP with a master’s degree and invited him to Hong Kong. Kater gave his first set of lectures at Ming Hua in 2006 and was invited to return for a full semester.

He has taught a course on ministry for the graduating students at

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

Ming Hua Theological College

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Ming Hua every year since his “retirement” from CDSP in 2008, most recently in the spring semester.

What keeps him going back? The list is long but includes the “amazing hospitality” offered by students, faculty, staff and friends, and “the opportunity to keep learning about this part of the world and how Christian faith, and specifically the Anglican Way, impacts it.

And the opportunity to observe Anglican Christians in a part of the world where Christians “I want seminarians to are in a minority and understand that the Anglican where they interact with people of other religious Communion is a unique traditions—and no family living in many different religion—with respect for dispersed places but with both differences and similarities.” shared values and beliefs.”

What might CDSP students expect to gain — Gareth Jones from spending time at Ming Hua and in Hong Kong? “If they come with curiosity, respect for diversity, and openness to considering that there is more than one way to do mission and ministry and that it is always related to context, they will learn how Anglican Christians do ministry in a society and culture that is C R O S S I N G S Spring 2014 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

both similar and different,” Kater said.

“That should encourage them to think long and hard about the implications for how they will be practicing ministry in their own context,” he added. “They will also discover the importance of profound hospitality for interactions among Christians and experience the Anglican Way in a very different cultural setting shaped by Chinese traditions that are thousands of years old.”

Jones said cross-cultural experiences were “hugely” important to his formation and expects that also to be the case for seminarians today.

“I want seminarians to understand that the Anglican Communion is a unique family living in many different dispersed places but with shared values and beliefs,” Jones said.

“Every experience, including the cross-cultural, should help deepen the time seminarians spend with God listening to their calling and reflecting upon their relationship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

“My hope in visiting the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui is to build relationships with Anglicans across the globe, and to learn about the ways they have made Anglican Christianity alive and meaningful in their unique context,” he said.

Loy, 27, first became aware of the importance of cross-cultural relationships in 2003, when the Diocese of New Hampshire elected Gene Robinson to be its bishop. Robinson was the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church.

“During the election of Gene Robinson, one of the things I saw was that we needed to have relationships across the Communion,” said Loy, who is from New Hampshire.

“It seemed that we were scrambling to build those relations. It’s important to me to build those relationships ahead of time so they are in place for supporting conversation.

I expect the relationships I form through this trip to be an integral part of my life’s ministry.”

As Loy has discovered, one’s ministry can change in new and unexpected ways.

“I went to the University of New Hampshire, where I majored in plant biology,” he said. “After graduation I worked for a year in plant breeding research. That’s when I realized that rather than working in the field during the week and doing youth work on weekends, I’d rather work in the church during the week and work in the garden on weekends.”

Loy’s trip to Hong Kong is funded by a

grant administered by the Seminary Consultation on Mission, a creation of the Council of Deans of the ten Episcopal seminaries to encourage, cross-pollinate and coordinate the mission interests of the schools. His sevenweek program is still being formulated.

“In an increasingly globalized world and in the multi-cultural context of the United States, CDSP’s relationship with Ming Hua will help us form lay and ordained leaders who can navigate the complexities of inter-cultural relationships.”

— Ruth Meyers

“They have a huge network working with social services and schools,” Loy said of the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui. “I will be housed at the Ming Hua Theological College and be able to sit in on classes. Hopefully, I’ll have a chance to visit some of the social service projects and some of the missions.

Something I’m particularly interested in is the creation of a new version of the prayer book.

One of the professors there, Lam Chun Wai, has done a lot of work on that.”

Lam also was influential in arranging Meyers’ recent visit. “I was his faculty advisor and directed his thesis project on developing

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A seminarian sets out After being exposed to professors who have visited Ming Hua and seminarians from Hong Kong who are studying at CDSP, Reed Loy is ready to learn first-hand about Anglicanism in a different culture.

Ruth Meyers and Elder Fu Xianwei of the China Christian Council in Shanghai.

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

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When Dean Mark Richardson (center) spoke to students at Ming Hua Theological College in March, Principal Gareth Jones, (second from left), Vice Principle Lam Chun Wai (on Richardson’s left), Professor Emeritus John Kater of CDSP (second row, right) and Academic Programme Director Matthew Jones (first row right) were on hand.

an inculturated marriage rite for the Anglican church in Hong Kong,” Meyers said.

While at Ming Hua, Meyers met with the director of academic studies to begin more formal conversations about establishing a student exchange. “Our ties as Anglicans in a global communion are a precious element of our heritage,” she said. “We learn from one another by building relationship. In an increas­ingly globalized world and in the multicultural context of the United States, CDSP’s relationship with Ming Hua will help us form lay and ordained leaders who can navigate the complexities of inter-cultural relationships.”

Kwong said visiting CDSP seminarians and faculty will encounter an abundance of ministry opportunities, “My hope in visiting the Hong including in educaKong Sheng Kung Hui is to build tion and social service work. Language will not relationships with Anglicans ­present a barrier, he said, across the globe, and to learn because Hong Kong is bilingual, with Engabout the ways they have made lish and Chinese given Anglican Christianity alive and equal status. Cantonese is the primary Chinese meaningful in their unique language used in Hong context.”

Kong, with a smattering of Mandarin.

— Reed Loy “We have about 50 parishes in the province, and we have 80 active, fulltime clergy. Currently in Ming Hua there are only three postulants, with several in the process of discernment. So I need more candidates,” Kwong said. “The province has a

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

plan to build a hospital, a 400-bed general hospital. Hopefully, we’ll get the project started later this year. Again, we’ll need clergy to work in hospitals as well.

“Also, one of my dreams and missions is to have school chaplains. We run over 150 schools, and our teachers are far too busy to spend time with the students other than teaching, and the students need someone to talk to.”

Kwong noted that when it comes to social services, Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui is the third largest provider in Hong Kong, with 5,000 community-based social workers serving the elderly, children and families.

Additionally, visiting seminarians can be placed at St. John’s Cathedral in Hong Kong or with the Mission to Seafarers.

“We’re particularly good at inte­grating the academic and formational aspects of training, together with a very intimate sense of community,” Jones said. “Every day is always both formational and academic. That is de­­ liberate. We have designed our training to be the opposite of an academic degree with some extra practical classes bolted on at the end. Everything begins and ends with Anglican ministerial and spiritual formation.”

Kung Hui (“Holy Catholic Church”) Ming Hua Theological College and was given the responsibility of training priests for full-time ministry in the church. Today, Ming Hua is the provincial training center for both clergy and laity.

An audience of 80, most of them lay people, attended a lecture Meyers gave in February at a conference in Hong Kong for adults who assist in worship services in their congregations.

“They wanted to better understand what is required in Anglican worship and where local flexibility is possible,” she said. “I was impressed with how seriously they approached their ministry. Though the culture in Hong Kong is very different, we share a common Anglican liturgical culture, and it was easy to make connections.”

Kater said evening programs for laity are growing by leaps and bounds.

“I teach one class in the January term and one in the academic term, but my work also includes giving evening lectures open to the public,” he said. “That, in some ways, has been the biggest thing I’ve changed at the seminary. One of my lectures had 150 people attending. It’s pretty much the only show in town in terms of serious adult education for lay people, and some clergy come also.

“CDSP is particularly good at what I call generous Anglicanism, an open and welcoming understanding of our Communion family.”

— Gareth Jones

I usually get about 50 people for an evening lecture.

“The seminary is somewhat small,” Kater said. “A lot of energy is invested in their bachelor degree program, which has about 60 lay students.”

Ming Hua’s Bachelor of Divinity is a six-semester program designed primarily for the laity. It is in its second year and has been met with great enthusiasm, Kater said. The need for lay leaders in the province is great, and seminary officials are exploring the possibility of lay people from Hong Kong participating in short-term intensive courses at CDSP. “The diocese has an enormous system of primary and secondary schools, so graduates could work in the schools as chaplains or religion teachers,” Kater said. “In the case of CDSP students, I see them coming

and using Ming Hua as a base, but they also would have a chance to experience the whole breadth of the Christian ministry in Hong Kong.”

In addition to the Bachelor of Divinity, Ming Hua offers a Master of Arts in Religion in Education in partnership with the Hong Kong Institute of Education, a clinical pastoral education program and a lay training program that is less intensive than the bachelor’s degree.

Richardson said he would like to establish the partnership between the two seminaries so CDSP students who go to Ming Hua could earn academic credit toward their degrees while studying there. He said the church in Hong Kong’s extensive social programs offer a great opportunity for CDSP students.

“I think that would be a terrific part of the exposure that our students would receive in going to Hong Kong,” he said. “It might be taking one or two courses and doing field education. It would not necessarily be a traditional education program.”

Richardson added that he is seeking funding with a goal of starting the exchange program in the 2015 academic year. “There is a great deal of interest among our stu­dents and supporters,” he said.

Ming Hua’s mission to the laity Established in 1947 by Bishop R.O. Hall in what was then the Church of England’s Diocese of Victoria, Ming Hua College was at first dedicated to the education of poor and underprivileged Chinese lay Christians.

In 1996, it became part of the Diocese of Hong Kong and Macau, was renamed Sheng Church Divinity School of the Pacific • Spring 2014 C R O S S I N G S

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by

Thomas C. Jackson

Twila Smith and Jay Walton

Photos by Thomas Minczeski

A “love feast” in a parking lot

This is the story of how a few CDSP students transformed a simple business transaction —renting out parking spaces to college football fans—into a new way of advancing the church’s mission, creating community and building up relationships, and in the process developed many of the practical skills essential to leading the 21st century church.

Above: Bisbee Goldfarb Left: (l to r) Charlotte Wilson, Twila Smith and Kelly Aughenbaugh

Photo by Thomas Minczeski

The transformation began with a time-honored tradition at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. For years, the seminary’s Celtic Cross Society has raised money for mission work by renting parking spaces to fans attending games at the University of California at Berkeley’s Memorial Sta­ dium. “It is a good way to raise money.

On a really good day, parking for a game generates enough to cover three or four of our $200 to $1,000 grants,” explained Celtic Cross Treasurer Jay Walton, a candidate for Holy Orders from the Diocese of Pennsylvania and a third year CDSP student.

In 2013, parking fees generated much of the more than $20,000 the Celtic Cross Society gave to 24 charitable organizations scattered around the world. Aimed at sharing God’s goodness and its own resources with

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others, the Celtic Cross Society has now taken its “parking lot evangelism” to another level.

One day last fall, Celtic Cross Society members starting talking with the people who park in CDSP’s lot about how their money would be used by the Celtic Cross Society. The Celtic Cross members explained the parking fee might help buy ‘Orphan Care Kits’ through the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance. Or the parking money might help care for displaced and abused children at the Victors Refugee Ministry in Kenya. Or perhaps their $35 parking fee would buy instruments for a local summer music program, or feed hungry day laborers in Berkeley.

“Sharing that information opened the door for more discussion,” said Deacon Twila Smith, a third-year

“We started talking with people about what we do with their money, and that led to conversations about what CDSP does and what the Episcopal Church does, and what we do as church.”

— J ay W a l t o n

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

CDSP student from the Diocese of Oklahoma. “People started to park their car, then walk back to talk with us about how we used their money.

People would say ‘I came back because I like the fact this money goes to help other people.’”

Smith, who anticipates ordination to the priesthood this summer, was elected to serve as missioner by vote of the CDSP community. The Celtic Cross Society includes all members of the CDSP community, including faculty, staff, students, spouses and partners. It works to help the CDSP community “reach out and meet its responsibility to clothe the homeless and feed the hungry of our world.”

“We began to build relationships with several people who parked in the lot; they were telling us about their lives,” Smith said. “And they asked us about our life in the seminary and our plans for the future. We shared our common desires for justice, for doing good in the world. We later recognized we were experiencing the kind of com­ munity we hope to nurture.” A transactional act—parking the car—was transforming into a kind of rela­tional community often found in churches.

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

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Photo by Thomas Minczeski

from raising money for mission to doing hand-on mission work, spending a cold December evening helping to cook and serve a warm dinner for homeless men at San Francisco’s W ­ inter Interfaith Shelter.

A month later she and other students spent a day in the city at Glide Memorial Church, Episcopal Community Services, and other churches and agencies in San Francisco to “see where God is moving in the city.” Now she is helping to develop the program goals and application form Celtic Cross Society will use in distributing the funds it raised.

“The more I have learned, the more I have been drawn into the Celtic Cross ­Society,” Aughenbaugh said. “I like that.” Aughenbaugh is one of those who have added hands-on mission work to the traditional ways many churches support the efforts of others.

Part of the Celtic Cross Society’s transformation may reflect Smith’s experiences during a 30-day, 490-mile walking pilgrimage around the San Francisco Bay. During this time she

“… the Celtic Cross Society is helping seminarians connect the dots between human needs, Christian faith, and program administration.”

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Front Row: Keith and Bisbee Goldfarb, Gyllian Davies, Twila Smith, Kelly Aughenbaugh.

Back Row: Andrew and Charlotte Wilson, Jamie Nelson, Susanna Singer, Jay Walton at the Winter Interfaith Shelter at First Unitarian Church, San Francisco

The result surprised both sides of the encounter. “One couple parked here for many years, and we realized they had funded almost four different grants,” Smith said.

“They were stunned at how much they had contributed and how much they had done: they had not known how we worked with their support in the community.”

“It became an incredible experience,” Walton added. “We started talking with people about what we do with their money, and that led to conversations about what CDSP does and what the Episcopal Church does, and what we do as church. A Eucharistic-like experience developed as people were tailgating in the parking lot. It wasn’t Eucharistic in the sense of a priest leading worship. It was a sense of experiencing a real agape meal together.”

A tailgate party might seem an unusual setting for the kind of communal “love feast” shared among early Christians before the Eucharist was developed. But Walton knows what he experienced. “It didn’t matter where you lived, or who you were going to cheer for at the game,” he said. “For that time, as people tailgated together, our parking lot became one big agape meal. It was about more than money; it was about building

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

relationships and community.

“On the day of the last game of the season, I was really sad as I went from car to car because I had to say goodbye to people,” said Walton, who will graduate in May. “Working in the Celtic Cross Society parking program had become a way of showing that church is more than Sunday worship, that we can find and be church in the most unusual and unexpected places.”

As Smith and Walton completed their final year, the Celtic Cross Society also found new ways to involve others in the process of keeping the mission going.

“I heard about the Celtic Cross Society as a place that did mission work,” said Kelly Aughenbaugh, a first-year student from the Diocese of Ohio. “I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I wanted to help, so I signed up to help park cars.

“The best part is when you are able to talk with those who are interested,” she added. “I’ve had some amazing conversations with people as they were in their cars coming into the parking lot about what their money is going towards.”

As the year continued, Aughenbaugh became more and more involved with the Celtic Cross Society. This winter she moved

Photo by Thomas Minczeski

— Twila Smith

more than raising money, reviewing grant applications, and writing checks.

“Part of the work is raising money and part of it is deciding which applications receive financial support,” Smith said. “We’re trying to reorder that and integrate hands-on mission work, prayer, and awareness of needs.”

This means Celtic Cross Society members are preparing to serve in the grant-making process by doing hands-on mission work.

Through forging this link between ministry, fund raising, and grant making, the Celtic Cross Society is helping seminarians connect the dots between human needs, Christian faith, and program administration.

The new Celtic Cross approach helps students find new connections between mission and money, said the Rev. L. Ann Hallisey, dean of students. “It really puts a human face on mission work. It is not just a new way to raise money for missions; it is finding new ways to do mission and be church.”

Walton agrees. “My experience with Celtic Cross reflects one of the ways CDSP is very different from other seminaries,” he said.

“Looking back across my three years here, it is also one of the reasons I am glad I chose this school. Through this experience, I have learned of new ways we can meet the chal­­lenge of being church in the 21st century. It is about learning how to be church in real life.”

The Rev. Thomas C. Jackson (MDiv ‘08) is interim vicar of St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco and Episcopal chaplain at Stanford Hospital.

Andrew Wilson

visited 70 Episcopal churches to explore the sacredness in the midst of daily life. “I met people from all walks of life who were hungry for Good News and so many people generously sharing God’s love,” she said. “It seems that people often are, quite literally, peering into the Church at a threshold, and we are looking out, unsure what to do next.”

By incorporating the CDSP community into this way of doing mission and being church, the Celtic Cross Society encourages leaders of the 21st century church to respond to those standing on our threshold by doing

Located in the heart of the Graduate Theological Union, CDSP trains students for hands-on ministry in a richly ecumenical and interfaith environment.

Our graduates are Episcopal in identity and innovative in contemporary life.

Please support our work with a gift using the envelope provided in this issue of Crossings or by giving online at cdsp.edu/giving.

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

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Clockwise from bottom left: Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, Lizette Larson-Miller, Terrance Goodpasture, Ed White and Caroline McCall

Necessary Things Reading Hooker among friends by

T r i pp H u d g i n s Photo by Thomas Minczeski

“Who in their right mind would sign up for a class on Richard Hooker?

No one!” So said Dan JoslynSiemiatkoski, associate professor of church history at CDSP, when I asked him the question.

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Crossings asked Tripp Hudgins, a doctoral student in liturgical studies at the Graduate Theological Union who keeps the popular blog “Conjectural Navel Gazing; Jesus in Lint Form” (AngloBaptist.org), to visit CDSP’s Richard Hooker Reading Group and write about it. Hudgins, an ethnomusicologist, is associate pastor of First Baptist Church of Palo Alto.

Yet, there we were, the Richard Hooker Reading Group, eight intrepid souls seated around a couple of tables in Denniston Commons early one afternoon, reading the work of the 16th century English theologian who may be the closest thing that the Anglican tradition offers to founding intellect—a Martin Luther or a John Calvin.

The work under discussion was Hooker’s monumental, multi-volume Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, and we were going at it in an extremely unusual way, by reading it aloud to one another. We would each read a sentence and at certain points in the reading, JoslynSiemiatkoski, who established the group, would stop us and ask if we had questions or insights.

It is slow going, but the pacing gives room to think and wonder to­gether. There is vulnerability, free­dom, and responsibility that comes from this kind of shared learning. It is

“slow reading” akin to the “slow food movement” or Chris Smith’s Slow Church.

“Slow reading is a way of forming community,” Joslyn-Siemiatkoski says. “You are not going to master it all. There is wisdom from slowing down and trying to just think together.”

It is no exaggeration to say that JoslynSiemiatkoski started the group because he wanted intellectual company in grappling with the Hooker readings. After buying the Folger critical edition of Hooker’s magnum opus during a recent sabbatical, he put the books on his shelf and realized, “I am never going to read through the Laws on my own.”

But who else would see the benefit in reading Hooker? He’s hardly a subject of debate in the wider academic world. A deep appreciation of his work isn’t going to help a seminarian land a prestigious job, or solve the first major pastoral crisis that presents itself once that job is landed. Yet six or seven curious souls, most of whom are seeking the master of divinity degree, materialize for each session to wrestle with a giant.

The Rev. Stephen Shaver, a PhD student and Episcopal priest, said he was interested in the particulars of Anglican tradition and Hooker’s particular perspective.

Philippa White, an exchange student from Ripon College Cuddesdon, points out “Hooker’s Laws is a foundational text for Anglicanism, which means he is relevant to modern Anglicanism because history always shapes us. This doesn’t mean that everything he says we agree with, but it does show us where we’ve come from.”

Jessica Abell, (MDiv ’12), ministerial associate at First Baptist Church of Denver, attends the reading group when she visits friends in Berkeley.

She was initially drawn to the group because of her love of history and the “iconic” nature of Richard Hooker’s “three-legged stool” of Anglicanism: scripture, tradition and reason. Anglican identity, and the various ways in which Anglicans have tried to understand it, is a common interest among most participants.

As the group finished a passage in which Hooker outlined some of what he considered the defining elements of a church, essential in defining a church, Joslyn-Siemiatkoski asked: “Do we recognize the same church? What are the threads that remain?”

He has worked with the Anglican mission in Poland and is clear that in that context, Anglicanism is not about the Englishness of the tradition. Joslyn-Siemiatkoski reminds our group that Hooker is seeking to answer an essential question, “What are the necessary things?”

For Hooker, the necessary things were how one uses scripture, the elements of a rite, the aspects of belief, but specific moral behavior is not foundational. This is not to say that there are no ethics, per se, but Hooker shies away from the prescriptive. It was simply not his project.

He was interested in the theological confession of the Church and the establishment of religion in England.

The particularities of time and place are paramount to understanding him.

Hooker is saying “the Church of England is the best thing for England,” Joslyn-Siemiatkoski says. This understanding affords participants an opportunity to ask the same question today: What is the Episcopal Church in relationship to American culture, in relationship to this commonwealth?

What does the Episcopal Church have to offer?

He frames his own answer as a modest invitation: “There is a way in which we discern the common truths of Christianity—and we didn’t discover it—but it is a heritage we pass on, and it is a deep well, a deep well to drink from, and we would like to offer you a drink from it.”

Abell was intrigued to discover how often Hooker spoke directly to his contemporaries in his work. “We pride ourselves on our communications technology,” she says. “But if it weren’t for letters between bishops we wouldn’t have a church.”

Christian faith is communicated in conversation between people across time. Letters and tomes such as Hooker’s mammoth work are records

of conversations between contemporaries. They serve as a model for how to do theology as much as they serve as a record of theology.

I left my visit to the reading group know­ing more about both Hooker and how to approach challenging texts. The act of reading together makes it possible to begin to understand Hooker and his present usefulness in a way that might not be available otherwise. The practice itself teaches us something.

Not long afterwards, CDSP announced that Joslyn-Siemiatkoski had accepted a new position with the Seminary of the Southwest. So the slow-reading-of-Anglican-titans movement may spread from Berkeley to Austin.

“One of the most countercultural things that the church in the United States does is we sing together and we read things out loud to each other.” Joslyn-Siemiatkoski says.

“Reading out loud makes you very vulnerable. There’s a way of creating vulnerability that creates community...There is a way that our notions of expertise changes. This kind of reading compels us to grapple with what we don’t know in the midst of community.”

Photo by Thomas Minczeski

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

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

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A kind of homecoming

A family’s allegiance Sally Jean Lash continues a tradition of generous giving by

Sally Lash and Richard Schaper

L u S ta n t o n L e ó n

WILLIAM STAFFORD is back in the classroom by

There are both practical as well as poignant reasons for supporting Church Divinity School of the Pacific. For Sally Jean Lash, it is a way of honoring both her father and grandfather and supporting a new generation of leaders who carry on their legacy.

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Her father, Frank Harry Lash IV, died post-surgery on Good Friday in 1943 while he was a student at CDSP. Her mother, Jean, who was pregnant with Sally when Harry died, remembered with gratitude the kindness shown to her by Dean Randolph Miller and Harry’s fellow students, who placed a tablet in All Saints Chapel in his memory.

“I started an annuity with CDSP about five years ago,” Lash said of her financial support of the seminary.

“It is in honor of my father, and the reason I chose CDSP is because my mother did express more than once that she’d like to have part of what she leaves go to ministerial education.”

Lash, who lives in Arcadia, California, graduated from Whitworth University in 1965. She taught junior high and high school mathematics for many years in the Hueneme School District in Oxnard, California, and the Alhambra School District in Alhambra, California, before retiring in 2004. She now enjoys traveling and in 2008 vis­it­­­ed the CDSP campus for the first time.

Her father wasn’t the first in the

Lash family to pursue the ministry.

Her grandfather, Frank Harry Lash III, became a Navy chaplain in 1917. In World War II, he served as senior chaplain to the U.S. Naval forces in the Pacific and the European theatres.

Following in his footsteps, Sally’s father enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II. After a medical discharge, he enrolled at CDSP while continuing to work in the Kaiser Shipyard on the swing shift as a rigger.

“He loved his country so dearly and was so disappointed that he could not go to sea, that he felt he must continue in defense industry while preparing for a later career in the church,” wrote Frank’s father to a nephew after his son’s death.

Lash’s commitment to the vocations of both her grandfather and her father will soon be passed on to another generation of CDSP students through the Frank Henry Lash Memorial Scholarship, established by Sally, which, beginning in 2015, will offer a $5000 scholarship to a CDSP student considering military chaplaincy.

Lash is a member of the George and Augusta Gibbs Society, which comprises almost 200 people who have included CDSP in their will or estates plans.

The Rev. Richard Schaper, CDSP’s planned giving advisor, oversees the Gibbs Society and worked with Lash to establish the scholarship.

“Sally’s gifts to CDSP are testimony to her deep devotion to the service that both her father and grandfather

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

gave our country and our church,” he says. “Establishing a scholarship to encourage seminarians considering military chaplaincy is visionary and will carry on this family legacy.

Sally’s gift annuities and her current contributions to our endowment will, like those of her fellow Gibbs Society members, secure our mission both now and in the future.”

The Gibbs family’s relationship with CDSP dates to the founding of the seminary, when in the 1890s they offered a building and property in San Mateo to build the West Coast’s first Episcopal divinity school. George Gibbs also added stock from his iron business to help fund the new institution. The original seminary building in San Mateo was known as Gibbs Hall.

Later, after her husband’s death, Augusta continued her support for CDSP by building a new seminary in his memory next to Grace Cathedral after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. In honor of the Gibbs legacy, in 1924 the seminary named its first building on the new Berkeley campus Gibbs Hall, which is now a guest residence with meeting rooms and the sacristy office for All Saints Chapel.

For more information about how you can support CDSP with a planned gift, contact Schaper at 510-204-0707 or via email at richard@wealthsteward.net.

Rebecca Wilson

Like the Christian mystics and ­thinkers he likes to study, the Rev. Dr. William Stafford is on a journey.

For the 2014-2015 academic year, his travel brings him to Berkeley as visiting professor of church history at CDSP. Stafford is no stranger to seminary life.

He was a professor of church history at Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS) from 1976-2004, and also served as associate dean for academic affairs there from 1997-2004. He was dean of the School of Theology at Univer­ sity of the South (Sewanee) from 2004 until 2012. He also taught a course in the English Reformation at CDSP during the fall of 2013.

“I am just thrilled to have a chance to be back in the classroom in a concentrated way,” said Stafford. “My first calling, my first vocation as a Christian and as a priest is to be a teacher and a learner. As I prepare new classes for students at CDSP, I’m getting a chance to learn and relearn a lot of things.

I’ve missed that badly.”

During the fall semester, Stafford will teach a course on the history of the Western church from the second through the fifteenth centuries. In the spring semester, he will teach Western church history from the Reformation through the 20th century and a course he developed at VTS and Sewanee called “Classics of the Christian Journey.” Students will read Christian spiritual classics by authors including Perpetua, Origen, Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux and Julian of Norwich.

Stafford, who spent his career at two of the Episcopal Church’s largest seminaries, thinks that CDSP brings essential perspectives to ministry in the 21st century.

“California is a radically secular society,” said Stafford, who now lives in San Jose.

“Except for the time of Spanish colonization, it’s never really been part of Christendom.

Now other parts of the United States are becoming this way.”

“People here ask questions about faith that make their lack of Christian context clear, and that offers all kinds of learning opportunities for Christian formation,” he says. “We have to learn to sing the Lord’s song in a new key, and CDSP offers students the opportunity to master that in seminary.”

The Graduate Theological Union (GTU) also provides CDSP students with ecumenical and interfaith perspectives on their faith. Last fall, Stafford remembered, his English Reformation class included a Unitarian Universalist student who was cross-registered from another GTU school.

“He brought perspectives to bear that were not familiar to Episcopalians in the class,” he said. “As we studied the beginnings of Anglicanism, he asked questions from outside the circle of Anglicanism. That is a very good thing when you are learning Anglican tradition.”

As Stafford prepares to spend more time in Berkeley, he is especially enthusiastic about the chance to participate in CDSP’s Thursday evening Community Night, which includes Eucharist, supper and, periodically, visiting speakers.

“What I really missed when I taught just one course last year was the Eucharistic community,” said Stafford. “As a visiting professor, I can spend more time on campus and be more fully engaged in the formation of students and the life they are sharing.”

“Having Bill at CDSP next year will be a tremendous boon to our entire community,” said the Rev. Dr. Ruth Meyers, CDSP’s academic dean. “We are all eager to welcome him to campus and learn from his deep learning and rich experience in the church.”

Stafford, who holds a bachelor’s degree from Stanford and an MA, MPhil and PhD from Yale, anticipates yet another benefit to his time on Holy Hill.

“As a Stanford graduate, I am delighted for the opportunity to be a missionary to Berkeley.”

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Faculty News

Professor Bradley Burroughs and Professor Steed Davidson Were on the keynote panel at the October 2013 conference of the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary Theological Education for Emerging Ministries (TEEM) program. They spoke on “New Ways of Doing Theology and Being Church.”

page 11) toured the newly renovated Holy Trinity Cathedral in Shanghai, and met with Guo Feng, one of the leaders of the church in Shanghai.

Attended the North American Academy of Liturgy in Orlando, Florida, January 2-5, and presented papers on same-sex blessings in the Episcopal Church to the Anglican Colloquium and to the Liturgy and Culture Seminar.

Presented a paper, “For the Common Good: Missional Worship,” at Ripon College Cuddesdon in December 2013 on the final day of her fall semester sabbatical.

Presented a paper introducing the Episcopal Church resources for blessing same-sex relationships, titled “I Will Bless You, and You Will Be a Blessing,” at a meeting of Oxford Liturgists at Merton College, Oxford on October 22.

Was awarded a Conant Fund Grant for her fall 2013 sabbatical study at Ripon College Cuddesdon, a theological college in England with which CDSP has an exchange program.

Academic Dean Ruth Meyers Visited Ming Hua Theological ­Col­lege in ­Jan­uary 2014 to continue build­ing the relationship between CDSP and that seminary and gave several presentations (see page 8 to learn more).

Visited Shanghai, where she met with Elder Fu Xianwei, leader of the China Christian Council, (see photo

Professor Marion Grau Published a paper, “Germans, Jews and Indians: Negotiating Nation, Religion and Identity in the Enlightenment” online and in Body, Emotion and Mind: ‘Embodying’ the Experiences in Indo-European Encounters, ed.

Martin Tamcke, et al.

Presented a paper at the annual

Professor Bradley Burroughs Attended the January 2014 Society of Christian Ethics meeting in Seattle where he convened a paper by Jermaine McDonald that compared the respective political approaches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and President Barack Obama.

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meeting of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature titled “Why Theology?” of the Bible, Theology, and Postmodernity Group, and gave a short summary of an essay she wrote titled “Circumambulating Exodus-Migration-Conquest: A Theological Hermeneutics of Migratory Narrativity” at a meeting of the World Christianity Group on the topic Contemporary Issues of Migration and Theology.

Was awarded a Conant Fund Grant and a grant from the Norwegian Research Fund. Grau spent the summer of 2013 working on a book on intercultural theological hermeneutics and researching the recent increase in pilgrimage travel in Europe as a reengagement with Christian heritages and spiritual and cultural roots. ­ rofessor P Lizette Larson-Miller Visited Minnesota to prepare the sites and schedule for the 2015 congress of Societas Liturgica. The meeting will take place at Luther Seminary in St. Paul and at St. John’s Abbey, College­ville. She is also preparing to be part of a Christian Systematic Theology Session at the American Academy of Religion’s upcoming meeting on “A New Way of Doing Theology: David Brown and the Practices of Art and Faith.”

Gave a paper at the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation in Dublin in July 2013.

Dr. Donn F. Morgan and the Rev. Dr. Linda L. Clader retired from Church Divinity School of the Pacific on June 30, 2013.

Professor Susanna Singer Led a retreat in September 2013 on the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Parables of Jesus for Associates of the Sisters of the Transfiguration.

Made a presentation in November 2013 at the annual meeting of the Religious Educators Association on effectively integrating community organizing training into the seminary curriculum.

Was awarded a Conant Fund Grant for her summer work in community organizing with the Industrial Areas Foundation and with Sr. Judy Donovan, lead IAF organizer for Northern California.

The Study of Liturgy and Worship: An Alcuin Guide, edited by Juliette Day and Benjamin Gordon Taylor (SPCK and Pueblo Books, 2013), includes articles by three CDSP faculty: Professor Emeritus Louis Weil, Professor Lizette Larson-Miller, and Academic Dean Ruth Meyers.

Professor Susanna Singer Church Divinity School of the Pacific • Spring 2014 C R O S S I N G S

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Our Active Alums

Please submit news and photos to Alum Happenings CDSP 2451 Ridge Road Berkeley, CA 94709-1211 or e-mail alumni@cdsp.edu

Think more like a business…

Thanks to a gift of former dean and president Donn Morgan and his wife, Alda, the Rev. John Rawlinson (’71), the former archivist for the Diocese of California, has begun cataloguing and organizing the papers of Massey Shepherd. Shepherd is a former CDSP professor and one of the architects of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

The Rev. Victoria Warren (CTS ’05) has been called as priest in charge to St. John’s in the Wilderness, Glenbrook, Nevada.

In April 2013, the Rev. Dr. Susan J. Armstrong (CAS ’06) was called as priest in charge of Christ Church in Eureka, California.

The Rev. Robert E. Walden (’77) re-retired at the end of November 2013. For the past year he has been the interim vicar of Grace Church on the Island of Molokai in the Hawaiian Islands. Molokai is the home of the Hansen’s Disease Colony, which has had two saints recently recognized by the Roman Catholic Church: Father Damien and Mother Maryann Cope.

He will be returning to Kaneohe, Hawaii, and will continue his ministry there.

The Rev. Dr. Norman F. Somes (’88) published Seeds for Church Growth— A Practical Handbook for Episcopal Rectors. Based upon successful parish experience, the book describes eighty congregation-growing initiatives from which church leaders may select their path to evangelism.

The Rev. Gail Greenwell (’01) began serving as dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Cincinnati on November 1, 2013.

The Rev. Caroline J.A. Hall (’03) has written a book, A Thorn in the Flesh, that has been published by Rowman and Littlefield.

The Rev. Joanna Hollis (’09) has been called as the rector of Christ Church in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

The Rev. Coke McClure (CAS ’10) became rector for two rural parishes in western Nebraska: St. Matthew’s Episcopal in Alliance and Calvary Episcopal Church in Hyannis. In the summer of 2013, he completed his three-year commitment serving the Diocese of Lexington with the Network of Healthy Congregations Ministry.

In Memoriam The Rev. Margaret Joan Jackson (’90) died on September 3, 2013.

The Rev. Roger Alan Pickering (’62) died on January 13, 2014.

Alums, please update your Alum Directory information by going to http://cdsp.edu/alum-directory or email alumni@cdsp.edu.

A my V ogelsang , MBA Vice President for Finance and Operations by

Nonprofit organizations such as seminaries are constantly encouraged to “think more like a business.”

We must be able to demonstrate to our funders that we understand how our institution is a business and that we understand how to be fiscally prudent and to steward our donors’ investments responsibly. In this and subsequent columns, I want to take up the mantle of thinking like a business and explore how that mindset and those disciplines inform CDSP’s planning and operations.

One of the tenets of good business planning is communicating plans and creating buy-in among the stakeholders to support those plans.

We are all stakeholders of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, and I hope this column will inspire a dialogue and a shared view of how we will think like a business in support of CDSP’s mission.

Let’s begin with the concept of risk and how it applies to running CDSP in 2014.

In the 20th century, seminaries operated on a pretty straightforward business model. Philanthropists endowed property and scholarships and chairs; parishes and bishops supplied postulants and esteemed scholars trained students in the traditional disciplines during the student’s three-year, residential experience.

Upon graduation, ordination led to placement in a parish. This was not a business model that required or rewarded risk. Conservative governance became the industry standard.

Funny thing about static, mature industries—they don’t stay that way.

Ask William Randolph Hearst about the newspaper. The picture of the lifecycle of an industry resembles a wave:

Facebook would be the enormous success it has become today. Like Zuckerberg, we have talent and experience and we, too, must place some bets on the best strategies for fulfilling the mission of theological

The Relationship between Risk and Maturity over the Lifecycle of the Industry

HIGH RISK

Once the industry reaches full maturity, risk increases

As the industry matures, risk decreases

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RISK LOW RISK Early Stages of the Industry

Full Maturity of the Industry

Revolution of the Industry

PRINTING PRESS

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

THE iPAD

Like so many other industries, our model for seminary education is at the onset of a revolution. I think we all know this. But we have no firm grasp, only some glimpses, on the future and the adaptations that will be required. How can we know more? Our path is affected by what the greater church does, by what happens in the field of education generally, by what happens in the development of technology and by changing demographics, among other things.

So, think more like a business.

The businesses that win are the businesses that take risks. Mark Zuckerberg had a well-informed hypothesis and a lot of talent, but he couldn’t guarantee anyone that

education at CDSP. Educated bets will be informed by questions such as: Who are we educating? For what ministry? How must the outcome of theological education change to meet to new perspectives and new conditions in the church? What role will the mainline U.S. denominations play in a world that will be dominated by cultures we don’t fully appreciate yet?

It’s an exciting time and a risky time. The revolution in seminary education calls on all of us to listen carefully, place thoughtful bets, and stay on our toes looking for opportunities.

The nature of this new ‘industry’ will reveal itself to its bold and invested supporters.

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

Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage

PAID Oakland, CA Permit No. 1638 2451 Ridge Road Berkeley, CA 94709-1211 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED

120th Commencement May 23, 2014 at 10:30 am St. Margaret’s Courtyard Church Divinity School of the Pacific

Join us as we celebrate our graduates and confer honorary degrees on: D r . J enny T e P aa -D aniel , GTU ’01 T he R t . R ev . T homas B reidenthal ’82 T he R t . R ev . E dward J. K onieczny ’94 Dr. Te Paa-Daniel will give the commencement address.

The event is open to the public and will be broadcast live at www.cdsp.edu.