To celebrate its 50th anniversary year, the Women's Center at Duke Divinity School held a special worship service and panel discussion this week.

Alma Tinoco Ruiz and Jung Choi, the faculty advisors for the Women's Center, opened the service with a brief history of the center, which serves as both a place for vocational and educational support for all women in the school and as an educational space for everyone in the Divinity School community,

Said Ruiz, "We join in this space today to honor the female students, faculty, and staff of Duke Divinity who with Holy Spirit conviction, vocational calling, and steadfast determination created space in this institution for women’s theological education and ministerial formation."

The worship service and panel were held in honor of Dr. Jill Raitt, the first woman tenured at Duke Divinity School in 1977. 

"In the 1970s, with the number of female students only increasing, women began asking for their own space here at Duke Divinity," said Ruiz. "Dr. Jill Raitt, the only female faculty member at the time, gave up her office for a center to be created. The space, which we celebrate today, opened officially in the fall of 1974."

Since it opened, the Women’s Center has served a center of information and education, vocational support, and institutional change. Student coordinators and faculty advisors have worked together to provide female students access to lectures from leading feminist scholars and female theologians, support in field education placements and discerning vocational calling, and opportunities to network with female Divinity School faculty.

Duke Divinity alumna Rev. Dr. Mindy Makant, Th.D., associate professor of religious studies at Lenior-Rhyne University, offered the sermon for the service on Mark 14:1-9, where an unnamed woman anoints Jesus' head with oil. 

"This woman today remains both unnamed and remembered," said Makant. "I find this juxtaposition to be interesting. Her unnamedness keeps me from filling in too many gaps.

"We don't know her story. We don't know her people. We don't know what her previous interactions with Jesus have been. Her unnamedness allows her to take the form of many, many women. We know who she is because of what she did and because of what that action said about who Jesus is. And we know a little bit more about who Jesus is because of what he then says about her."

The text is about identity, said Makant, the identity of the unnamed woman but also about Jesus and who Jesus values. 

Makant said she valued the book of Mark because of how much we learn about who Jesus is by his interactions with unnamed women in the Gospel. In Mark 5 and 7, she noted, "Jesus praises unnamed women and tells them that their healing was a result of their faith" and in this story, "Jesus says that the woman's act of faith, her hospitality, her act of prophecy, and that she herself will be remembered whenever the story of Jesus is told."

Makant named the heartbreaking experience of teaching students who feel unloved by their churches. They feel outcasted, unremembered, or marginalized.  

Said Makant, "I wonder how the world would be different if we as a church paid more attention not just to the unnamed women of scripture, but to the ways that Jesus responded to them."

Makant closed her sermon in remembrance of Dr. Raitt. She said, "I cannot imagine what it was like here at Duke Divinity School in 1974. I was in kindergarten. Things have changed a lot since 1974, and I think it's easy to forget this, but we know that things have also stayed the same.

"As we remember this unnamed woman who anointed Jesus and who was honored by Jesus for her faithfulness, I am grateful for the saint Dr. Jill Raitt for her courage and her wisdom not only to have but to act on that same mind that is in Christ Jesus."

The panel following the service was moderated by Dr. Valerie Cooper, associate professor of religion and society and Black church studies, who was the first African American woman to receive tenure at Duke Divinity School in 2014.

The other panelists included:

• Rev. Dr. Mindy Makant, associate professor of religious studies at Lenoir–Rhyne University and Duke Divinity alumna, Th.D.
• Dr. SueJeanne Koh, graduate futures program director of the humanities center at UC Irvine and Duke Divinity alumna, Th.D.
• Dr. Anathea Portier-Young, associate professor of Old Testament at Duke Divinity School
• Victoria Perez: adjunct Bible professor at Latin American Bible Institute College, Ph.D. candidate at USC, and Duke Divinity alumna, M.T.S.

The panelists discussed the value that the Women's Center space has brought to Duke Divinity School. Portier-Young said the Women's Center space led to a conversation with students that developed into the Certificate in Gender, Sexuality, Theology, and Ministry, when students shared with her their desire to examine the connection between gender and theological studies. Following the conversation, she met with colleagues Mary McClintock Fulkerson and Teresa Berger to collaborate on the certificate, which "the Women's Center helped birth into being," said Portier-Young.

They also discussed their journeys into ministry and academia, including the women who shaped them along the way. Perez said a Hebrew Bible professor and scholar helped her realize she can ask questions, saying, "I learned from that mentorship that it's okay to ask questions and to take it a step further, to continue to search for more questions, better questions."