The Alumni/ae Council is pleased to announce a gathering of alumni, friends, and students in Chicago on June 10–11, 2022, to present the Distinguished Alumna/us Award.
We’ll gather to celebrate and to reflect together on the kind of goodness that comes even in times of trial and trouble. We're planning a mix of discussion, conversation, food, and festivity. For more information, contact Amy Bertschausen.
The Distinguished Alumna/us Award recognizes lifelong service and achievement by a Disciples Divinity House alumna or alumnus. The recipients have been exemplars of varied forms of ministry and service; in some sense, they have each defined these forms. The award, established in 1979, is typically presented at the General Assembly.
W. Clark Gilpin, former Divinity School and DDH Dean, and David A. Vargas, President Emeritus of Division of Overseas Ministries, were selected by the Alumni/ae Council of Disciples Divinity House as special 125th anniversary recipients of the Distinguished Alumnus/a Award.
Clark Gilpin began his teaching career at Kenyon College, Ohio, and then joined the Phillips Theological Seminary faculty before becoming DDH Dean in 1984. He is the Margaret E. Burton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the Divinity School where he served as dean from 1990 to 2000. From 2000 to 2004 he directed the Martin Marty Center, and he has also served as the director of the university’s Nicholson Center for British Studies and as a member of the executive council of the Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture.
He studies the history of modern Christianity, especially in relation to literature, and is currently writing about the letter from prison as a genre of religious literature in early modern England. He is the author of three books: A Preface to Theology, Millenarian Piety of Roger Williams, and Religion Around Emily Dickinson. He is also the editor of American Christianities: A History of Dominance and Diversity with Catherine A. Brekus. He has served as a DDH trustee since 2011, and led the Disciples History and Thought seminar at DDH on a volunteer basis for more than a decade.
David Vargas's 28 years of service with the Division of Overseas Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) included ministry as the Executive for Latin America and the Caribbean, and culminated in his service, from 2003-11, as the President of DOM and Co-Executive of Global Ministries. He having helped to define Critical Presence as the priority in mission of Global Ministries, “the sacred project of meeting God’s people and creation at the point of deepest need.” Under his leadership, DOM launched a series of program initiatives toward “A Global Mission Church.”
He entered Disciples Divinity House in 1971 as a doctoral student in History of Christianity, having earned his BA from the University of Puerto Rico, and his MDiv at the Seminario Evangélico de Puerto Rico (SEPR). In 2003, he was awarded an honorary doctorate degree by the Evangelical Seminary of Puerto Rico. He was one of twelve recipients of the Somos Uno award at Obra Hispana in 2018. An ordained minister in the Christian Church, he served as a member of the Alumni/ae Council from 1992-1995, and has been a member of the Board of Trustees since 1999.
W. Clark Gilpin and David A. Vargas were honored at a special 125th Anniversary edition of the DDH Luncheon on July 23 at the General Assembly in Des Moines, Iowa. Garry Sparks introduced them.
Scroll over entries and click to access their addresses.
2019 David A. Vargas, Sacred Spaces and Altars of Hope
Introduction by Garry G. Sparks
1991 Frank C. Mabee
1989 William N. Weaver
1987 Marvin E. Smith, Crisis in the Christian Church
pdf version
1985 Robert A. Thomas
1983 K. Barton Hunter
1981 Irvin E. Lunger
1979 Arthur A. Azlein