Disciples Divinity House

Five persons have been selected as entering Scholars for 2012-13: Rachel Abdoler, Danielle Cox, Jeremy Fuzy, and Allison Lundblad have begun M.Div. studies; Andrew Packman has begun Ph.D. work in Theology.
Rachel Abdoler is a 2011 summa cum laude graduate of Drury University, where she majored in international politics, minored in Middle East Studies, and was named Outstanding Senior in both Political Science and in Middle East Studies. She came to Drury as a recipient of a Missouri Bright Flight Scholarship and Drury’s Presidential Scholarship. Rachel served as the vice president of the Student Union Board and as president of the International Affairs Council, and was involved in Model United Nations. She has given significant service leadership, including projects to foster multi-faith understanding, events in New Orleans and in Galveston, and a year-long service project with low income housing residents in Springfield, Missouri. She studied in Rome and interned at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, DC. She has studied Arabic for two years and continues her study this year. She is a member of National Avenue Christian Church in Springfield, Missouri, where she served as a co-sponsor of the youth group and which has been the context for some of her service leadership. Her goal is to become “an agent for the promotion of greater understanding and acceptance of different faith traditions.”

Danielle Cox was an honors student at Lynchburg College, where she majored in International Relations and graduated cum laude in 2012. She studied NGOs in India, attended a seminar on the European Union in Western Europe, participated in Model United Nations, and wrote an honors thesis on reconciliation and restoration in post-genocide Rwanda, for which she received high honors. As President of Disciples on Campus, she worked closely with the college chaplain, DDH alumna Stephanie McLemore. In 2011 as a summer intern with Disciples Volunteering at the Disciples Disaster Response mission station in Nashville, she facilitated volunteer flood relief work. For all four years of college, she was a Phillips Legacy Scholar. Danielle was also the president of the Interfaith and Community Service initiative, a representative to the Cooperative Campus Ministry, a Big Brother/Big Sister volunteer, a deacon at First Christian Church in Lynchburg, VA, a member of three honorary societies, an officer of her sorority, and a Writing Center Tutor. Her home church is First Christian Church, Houston, Texas. She plans to pursue the joint MDiv/Master of Public Policy program.

Jeremy Fuzy is a 2011 summa cum laude graduate of Drury University, where he majored in Religion/Philosophy and in Politics and Government, and was named Outstanding Senior in Religion/Philosophy. He served as president of the Religion/Philosophy Club, president of the International Affairs Council, member of the University’s Student Promotion/Tenure Committee, bass guitarist for the Marshfield Performing Arts Society, and stage manager for “The Jellybean Conspiracy,” a two-act drama. He was involved in Model United Nations and elected to the Pi Sigma Alpha National Political Science Honor Society. He studied in London, Prague, and Kraków one summer and, another, in Rome. He grew up in Marshfield, Missouri, where he was active in the United Methodist church. However, it was the formal study of religion and theology, together with his experience at National Avenue Christian Church during college and the mentorship of Drury professor Peter Browning, that became decisive for his pursuit of the MDiv degree. Last year, Jeremy co-sponsored the National Avenue youth group and volunteered at the Harvest on Wheels Farmer’s Market.

At Oberlin College, 2012 BA graduate Allison Lundblad studied religion broadly and deeply, including focused work in Near Eastern mythology, Pseudo-Dionysius, Catherine of Sienna, and on mercy and wrath in the Qur'an. Theology is her central interest, especially the public consequences of our attempts to make sense of God. Her senior capstone project, for which she received high honors, addressed Pierre Hadot’s interpretation of Origen. Allie was a Haskell Fellow in Ancient Near Eastern Studies and received the Religion Department’s Clyde Holbrook Memorial Prize. She was also a Fund for Theological Education Undergraduate Fellow and a HELM Leadership Fellow. She was deeply engaged in service and ministry as the organizer of Oberlin’s weekly Taizé service, as a community service volunteer, and as a youth worker at Washington Avenue Christian Church in Elyria, Ohio, where she planned a “30-hour famine event” to raise awareness of world hunger. During one winter term she led a group to France for the “Spirituality of Taizé.” In her home region of North Carolina, she served as a paid camp staff member and directed a Junior Camp, and she was the keynote speaker for the women’s retreat. This past summer she was an intern at HELM. She plans to do the joint MDiv/MA in Social Service Administration; she is also considering PhD work.

2012 MDiv graduate Andrew Packman accepted an offer of admission to the PhD program in Theology, and continues as a Disciples Divinity House Scholar. His interests include: eschatology and philosophies of history; the intersection of aesthetics, phenomenology, and theories of moral motivation and error; and relations among theological anthropology, memory, and cultural identity. In 2011 as a recipient of the Divinity School’s International Ministry Travel Grant, he returned to Bosnia to study reconciliation. Some of his reflections on that experience were published in the Christian Century (January 11, 2012) as “Table Manners: Unexpected Grace at Communion.” Andrew previously traveled to Bosnia with a Week of Compassion Seminarians Delegation. Last year, he co-chaired the Divinity School’s annual student-run Ministry Conference. He is a summa cum laude graduate of Loyola University in Chicago, and he completed a two-year internship at First Christian Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with alumnus Michael Karunas. He was ordained in August in his home congregation, First Christian Church of Centralia, Illinois.