Dear alumni/ae and friends,
Theological education is not a one-size-fits-all, pour and stir, check marks on a list sort of thing. At VDS, we have the moxie to continue to hew to our motto, Schola Prophetarum (school of the prophets.) In fact, each of the two main entrances of our new wing has it engraved in stone and when we drift from it, students will remind us about what and who we say we are. Yes, it’s a big chunk to bite off in any day and age and it is certainly true when we witness the ongoing brutality found in some forms of policing in our nation that was brought home once again in the senseless death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis. What does it mean then, to say as I do on our web page,
We are one of the few university-based, interdenominational schools for the preparation of ministers and the oldest one in the South. Our nineteenth-century founders adopted a commonplace label for theological institutions of their era, “school of the prophets,” as they sought to lift up the importance of education for clergy. Today, we accept this legacy as we live in a world of a large tent Christianity, religious pluralism, an ever-expanding understanding of the nature of the diversities in our midst, marvelous and challenging cultural differences and more.
I wrote this years ago and it is striking to me now that I did not call out those things that are just plumb evil—racism, sexism, heterosexism, trans-sexism, ageism, and the list goes on. But these are also the things that we must deal with in theological education as they are also religious, moral, and deeply spiritual issues that need to be addressed through these lenses as well as what we might do when shaping political and social policies. You see, the arc of theological education is long, and one sees schools that run the gamut from conservative to progressive (with lots of stopping points in-between). Each school has a constituency that desperately needs that school’s witness in today’s world as we all try to graduate folks who believe that the world is better if we approach one another as kinfolk rather than with maudlin suspicion or outright loathing.
Working with folks who have some sort of call in their lives that also involves the religious and/or spiritual is one of the great privileges we have in theological education and although the mainline protestant church may be shrinking, schisming, dying in the eyes of many—I call what is happening today transformation. We are moving to a new thing that may have some elements of our history, but we also lean more heavily into what we can’t yet see but know that we must strive for. And I believe that it is the job of theological education to help guide folks through this transformation—asking more questions at times than answers that we can give. But trusting that the Holy guides us—morning by morning and day by day.
Best,
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Emilie M. Townes
Dean of Vanderbilt Divinity School
University Distinguished Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society, Divinity School
University Distinguished Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies, College of Arts and Science
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Join Vanderbilt University as we celebrate Black History Month. The Black Cultural Center proudly presents a comprehensive list of events that combines both virtual and in-person opportunities for the community to participate in.
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David A. Michelson, associate professor of the history of Christianity, has written a new book, The Library of Paradise: A History of Contemplative Reading in the Monasteries of the Church of the East. Michelson's book examines how ideologies of empire, race, and religion have distorted past scholarship on Syriac manuscripts.
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Aaron Stauffer, Louisville Institute postdoctoral fellow, Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice director of online learning, published an essay “The Sounds and Silences of the Spirit: A Political Ecclesiology of Organizing” in The Other Journal. Stauffer's piece examines the political ecclesiology of organizing, learning from the life and work of Rev. George Washington Woodbey.
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Bruce Morrill, the Edward A. Mallory Chair of Roman Catholic Studies, professor of theological studies, recently published the constructive essay: “Sacramentality in the Anointing of the Sick” in the T&T Clark Handbook of Sacraments and Sacramentality. Morrill contributed to the second part of the volume, that is dedicated to a series of essays on sacramentality, and includes attention to elements of space, time, ritual action, music, and word, all as aspects of what Christians have termed “sacramental” reality.
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Join us for the Black History Month Exhibit, Culture Commodity, featuring artist Elisheba Israel Mrozik. Community gallery hours will be held in VDS room G06 through Feb. 24.
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Register now for the James Lawson Institute event: Black Life & Education: The Struggle for Black Studies in an Age of Denial, held in VDS room G29 on Feb. 21, 6 p.m.
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Save the date for the 2023 Bogitsh Lecture, to be delivered by: Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh, Ph.D. The lecture, More than a “Slave:” Enslaved Women, Religion, and New Histories of Black Humanity, will be held in The Space at VDS on March 2, 7 p.m. Check the VDS website for updates.
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