Misusing the name of God for violent and divisive purposes
The Societas Homiletica, the international guild of scholars in homiletics, capped a busy summer on Sterling Divinity Quadrangle with its biennial conference, centered on the topic “Picturing God in a Fragmented World.” The theme emerged from a major issue that preachers and homileticians say they are encountering no matter where they are located: the misuse of the name of God for violent and divisive purposes. Emilie Townes, associate dean of academic affairs and the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of African American Religion and Theology, a keynote speaker, said, “Colleagues, let’s stretch into our ministries (lay and ordained and beyond)—discover anew what a love of God and all of creation can and must mean when it is grounded in grace. … Sit down and play with the holy sand God has given you. … We must step into the places where the realities of diversity, difference, disagreement, harmony, hope, justice all exist as we seek out and try to live in genuine partnerships that are diverse, thoughtful, challenging, and strategic.”
YDS students garner prestigious awards
Three YDS students have been awarded major fellowships, two for work on the environment and one for poetry. Chosen for the 2010 class of environmental fellows by the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation are Stephen Blackmer ’12MDiv and Michelle Lewis ’13MDiv. Blackmer hopes to do ecology ministry as a priest in the Episcopal church, and Lewis is pursuing a dream to combine her interests in the environment, media, and pop culture to create her own nonprofit that would engage church groups in environmental issues. Nate Klug ’13MDiv is among five poets nationwide between the ages of 21 and 31 to be selected as a 2010 Ruth Lilly Fellowship winner. “My poems reflect two (perhaps contradictory) commitments,” says Klug. “First, I hope that my poems demonstrate care—care about their use of language, and care towards the poems’ subjects outside of language. … Second, I hope that my poems demonstrate abandonment, a relinquishment of human control over outcomes which poetry, unlike so many other ways of relating, can afford us.”
Faculty member teams with cosmologist on Journey of the Universe
YDS senior lecturer Mary Evelyn Tucker is partnering with cosmologist Brian Swimme on an ambitious multimedia project that aims to convey the nature of our physical world by tapping the perspectives of a multitude of disciplines, from astronomy to theology and religious history. The central component of the project is a film entitled Journey of the Universe, set for release in 2011. Already there is a website, www.journeyoftheuniverse.org, that gives visitors a taste of the film project’s breadth, including a video preview. A companion book is set to be published in 2011 by Yale University Press. An educational series will give the project further resonance in high schools, colleges, and divinity schools, according to Tucker. In June, PBS affiliate KQED in San Francisco is planning to give Journey of the Universe a broad debut in the United States’ sixth largest television market. “With the collective efforts of many people, including the voices of many Christian communities, we would hope to begin to reverse the exploitative worldview that dispenses with ecosystems and people in wanton ways,” Tucker observed. “New forms of eco-justice need to arise within the Christian churches to respond to this crisis that holds hostage the future of life itself.”
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