Until the world is different
David struck Goliath down on his first try and was celebrated in victory. That’s a nice way for the story to end but it’s important to remember that he took five stones with him. He understood that sometimes your faith has to endure a failure. All his hope can’t go into one stone. He’s going to have to keep throwing them until the world is different.
Alexis Vaughan, 2024 Convocation Address
By February 1: Send your nomination for the 2025 Distinguished Alum Award. Previous recipients have been exemplars of varied forms of leadership, ministry, and service; in some sense, they have each defined these forms. The award will be presented by the Alumni/ae Council at the General Assembly in Memphis on July 15.
Willemien Otten, Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor of the History of Christianity and Theology at the Divinity School, spoke on January 13. Her current work attends to nature and human nature, and especially to nature as an ally and co-worker with the divine.
Truly salt of the earth, Joy and Francis were hardworking Midwesterners. The Christian Church in Clever, Missouri, was central to their lives and their relationship. "Nothing would have given my parents greater delight than knowing that a fund had been established in their honor to help others fulfill their educational dreams," says Ritch Savin-Williams, DDH entering class of 1971. He is now Professor Emeritus of Cornell University and author of ten books on adolescent development, gender, and sexuality.
Kudos to Luther Young, who has been appointed Assistant Professor of Religion and Society at Boston University School of Theology. He earned his PhD in Sociology from The Ohio State University in December. He studies the causes and effects of homophobia in predominantly black churches. He was DDH Scholar in 2022-23 and is an ordained Disciples minister.
Rachel Abdoler has been awarded a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship. The award will underwrite six months of work in the collections of the Vatican library in Rome and a library in Cairo, Egypt, on Christian texts written in Arabic. The subject of her PhD dissertation is a thirteenth-century Coptic author’s interpretation of the passion of Christ and its background of Arabic Christian and Islamic writing.
Disciples History. Yvonne Gilmore, Vice President and Chief of Staff of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), spoke on November 11 about the life, ministry, and vision of Sarah Lue Bostick -- also the subject of her forthcoming book.
