Dear alumni/ae and friends,
In January, I told you that I would share with you what I believe I have learned/what I am continuing to learn about: theological education collegiality, scholarship, teaching, and service. I have walked through theological education and collegiality, so I now turn to scholarship. I do so in an incredibly difficult time here in Nashville and in our nation. A mass shooting on March 27 shattered our lives and souls as three nine-year-olds and three adults in their sixties were gunned down in the Covenant School, a private Christian school, pre-school through 6th grade. Nashville became the latest home for the brutal death from the barrel of an AR-15 military-style rifle. We, as a city that is a community of communities, have been living with fear, anger, sadness. For some, if not many, our mourning also holds a growing resolve that we must do something that addresses this senseless and destructive pattern of deaths that is visiting countless cities and venues in our country. It seems that nowhere is safe from what feels to me like an evil madness.
So, how does scholarship enter here? How can we put what some call the ivory tower of education to work for the common good and help us find strategies that address the ills of our society? It has been my belief that a theological school like Vanderbilt must be a place that helps inform and enlighten because senseless violence is not only a social problem it is a deeply theological one. Perhaps the most obvious thing I can say about theological scholarship in our roiling culture is that it must be relevant and help folks develop actions that have the mettle to stare down evil and eradicate it. Our religious historians can help remind us that there is a long arc to our struggle for democracy in this nation that we are still striving to make real. Our theologians can help us strive to dive deep into the inner workings of love, hope, faith, justice, peace, and more—they are not only ideals, but they must also become a way of living for us. Our homileticians and liturgical theologians must help folk understand that the Word is more than what we experience in Sunday worship or day of the week Bible study, it must be lived in ways large and small as we bring each other together because of our rich diversity rather than in spite of it. Our practical theologians help us look within to live together in the great dynamic of life and living as we seek to build and maintain a robust peace that does not run from conflict. Our ethicists must help folk dig deep into the ways in which we are called to bring together what we say we believe with what we actually do, and to realize the power of doing our first works over in community helps us build a place of welcome for all. Our biblical area helps remind us that scripture is so much more than a playbook—it is a deep and marvelous spiritual resource that we must embrace for its complexity and simplicity. And so it goes with various areas of the faculty.
We are in deep mourning and trying to make sense out of what we are being called to do and then to take the steps to make it so. As a school, we must be both refuge and a place that helps folks get into good trouble. We must provide a place for people who are seeking answers to the questions they may not have even asked yet and who refuse to believe that this storm of violence and inhumanity should be seen as normal.
Best,
