School Notes: Yale Divinity School
January/February 2017

Panel addresses faithful citizenship and the election

One month before the 2016 election, Yale Divinity School brought together a leading Christian theologian, one of the country’s preeminent pastors, and a US senator for a panel conversation at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on “Faithful Citizenship and the 2016 Election.” Appearing on the panel were Miroslav Volf, founding director of the Center for Faith and Culture at YDS; Otis Moss III ’94MDiv, senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago; and Chris Coons ’92MAR, a US senator from Delaware. Indira Lakshmanan, a prominent Washington-based journalist, moderated.

“This political campaign has placed values—moral values—in high relief,” Dean Greg Sterling said as he opened the event. “As Americans, we believe in the separation of church and state. However . . . we believe churches need to be places to debate and resolve, to the extent possible, the moral values that affect the crucial decisions that confront us.”

A video of the panel discussion can be found on the YDS YouTube channel.

Former slave honored with classroom dedication and scholarship

Divinity School students, faculty, and administrators, along with guests from around the state, gathered October 6 for a ceremony dedicating one of the school’s largest classrooms in honor of James W. C. Pennington, an escapee from slavery who attended divinity classes in the 1830s and thus became the first African American to study at Yale.

The school also announced the creation of a new scholarship in Pennington’s name, to be awarded to students studying for ministry who have a special interest in the African American experience. Making the lead gift to the scholarship fund are Washington attorney F. Lane Heard III ’73, ’79JD, and his wife, Margaret A. Bauer ’86, ’91MFA. Heard serves on the YDS Dean’s Advisory Council.