School Notes: Yale Divinity School
March/April 2016

Rare films donated to Divinity Library

Yale Divinity Library has received 13 reels of rare film footage documenting atrocities during the Japanese occupation of Nanking, China, in the 1920s and ’30s. The reels were donated by John G. Magee III, whose grandfather, John Gillespie Magee, recorded the film. The elder Magee, an Episcopal missionary who graduated from Yale College in 1906, was active in the International Safety Zone Committee that was set up in Nanking (now Nanjing) to protect civilians during the occupation of the city. Restoration and digitization of the film footage is being sponsored by the USC Shoah Foundation. The Divinity Library will provide film clips on its Nanking Massacre Project website (http://web.library.yale.edu/divinity/nanking/photographs) and make the full films available to researchers.

Course blends personal and academic

A new class for Divinity School students, Christ and the Good Life, taught by Professor Miroslav Volf and Lecturer Matthew Croasmun ’14PhD from the Center for Faith and Culture at YDS, blends the academic with the personal. Drawing on both ancient and modern sources, class discussions address the most basic questions of humanity: What does it mean to live the good life? and—more important—How can I live the good life? Setting the course apart from those typically offered for graduate students in theology, the second question invites students and professors to participate in the conversation not as theorists of the good life, but as hopeful participants in it. 

Episcopal Church leader visits campus

On November 1, the Episcopal Church and Bishop Michael B. Curry ’78MDiv made history: the denomination installed Curry as presiding bishop, making him the first African American to lead this major American church body. Just days before, Bishop Curry was at Yale to preach at Convocation and Reunions, interact with students and alumni, and receive one of YDS’s top alumni honors, the Award for Distinction in Congregational Ministry. Curry, who completed the program in Anglican Studies at YDS’s Berkeley Divinity School, explores his career, his aspirations for the Episcopal Church, and his perspectives on American religion in an interview he did for the current edition of the YDS journal Reflections. Read it at http://reflections.yale.edu/articles.