Garry Sparks (2001) will join the faculty of Princeton University in Fall 2023 as Associate Professor in the Department of Religion. He focuses on ethnohistorical understandings of theological production in the Americas, particularly by Indigenous peoples. He studies critical histories of Christian thought, religions of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, religion in Latin America, and theories of religion and culture. He attends to the periods of first contact between Native Mesoamericans and Iberian missionaries in the sixteenth century as well as to current religious movements like liberation theologies, teología india, Latin American Protestantism, and the revitalization of Indigenous traditionalism.

His third book project is a critical edition of a manuscript with with Frauke Sachse, that is tentatively titled “Pastoral Fieldnotes: A Sixteenth-century Handbook from the Maya Highlands.” He is also coordinating critical translations of the entire Theologia Indorum (“Theology for/of the Indians”) from Mayan-language manuscripts. He is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Latin American Religions and on the advisory committee for The Maya Book Project.

Upon recommendation from the Divinity School’s Alumni Council, the Board of  Trustees of the Baptist Theological Union has named DDH alumna Teresa Hord Owens (1999), the Divinity School Alumna of the Year for 2023.  

Rev. Teresa “Terri” Hord Owens is the General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada, a position she was elected to in July 2017. She is the first person of color and second woman to lead the denomination – and the first African American woman to lead a mainline Christian denomination.  

Many Disciples Divinity House students and alumni/ae have benefitred from Owens' care, insight, and leadership in her multiple roles as their colleague, pastor, dean of students, and General Minister and President.

Owens delivered her Alumnus of the Year address, entitled “A New Church for a New World” on Thursday, May 4, 2023, at 4:30pm, in Swift Lecture Hall. 

You can read the full news release from the University of Chicago Divinity School here.

Julian DeShazier (former trustee) was published in the May 2023 issue of The Christian Century with an article titled "The well-credentialed pastor." Julian writes about the need to revaluate the ways people are prepared and credentialed for ministry, and the certifications churches hold as "valuable." He writes, "For a congregation, if your pastor is the best and your pastor works for you, then how impressive does that make you? We've embraced this myth that smart people solve our problems. It's a classic model of leadership, even thought there are countless times when 'the smart one' leads us straight into nowhere."

Aneesah Veatch (2018) was published in the May 2023 issue of The Christian Century article titled "Ekow Eshun's jounrey into Black artistic consciousness." A review of Ekow Eshun's In the Black Fantastic, a bound volume that captures the celebrated exhibition of same name. The exhibition, and by extension the book, "is made up of works by artists of the African diaspora that interrogate norms and subvert Western White dischotomies of real/unreal, scientific/unscientific, and natural/supernatural to uncover racial injustice," Aneesah writes, "This is a perspective that I try to adopt in my daily work at an art museum: that we are not simply working on the surface level of things in the arts; rather, we are trying to manifest and bring about a world of greater consciousness."

Sandhya Jha (2001; trustee) begins a four-year intesnive PhD program in social policy at the University of Pennsylvania in fall 2023. Sandhya will be doing research work with SAFElab, a research initiative focused on examining the ways in which youth of color navigate violence on and offline, as part of her PhD work.

Yvonne Gilmore (2001) has been appointed as the Vice President and Chief of Staff of the Office of the General Minister and President. Yvonne served as Associate Dean of the Disciples Divinity House of the University of Chicago from 2013 - 2020 and co-taught in the Master of Divinity Arts of Ministry sequence at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. She also served as project director of the Constructive Theologies Project. She now leads the development and implementation of the Church Narrative Project, co-directs “Living Justice: An Anti-Racist Practicum” with Rev. Sandhya Jha, a justice learning and innovation lab that seeks to test out new approaches for connecting transformative Disciples leaders and ideas at Disciples Divinity House of the University of Chicago, and serves as a core trainer with Reconciliation Ministries and as adjunct faculty at Lexington Theological Seminary.

Gilmore will begin her Vice President and Chief of Staff role on May 1, 2023.

You can read more about the appointment here.

In a feature article for the April 1 issue of The Christian Century, Victoria Wick (2017) writes about "Five ways your church might already welcome autistic adults." She observes that "When a congregation succeeds in fostering theological curiosity and encouraging a variety of perspectives," it may also assure autistic adults that their differences "might be welcomed and celebrated, too." She offers practical wisdom for expanding that welcome in the article which is linked here.

Roger Adams (1969) is author of Good Faith: Beliefs Have Consequences (Wipf & Stock). Adams, a clinical psychologist who is also trained in ministry, charts how religious meaning and moral integrity can and must be compatible with science--and how human lives and community can be enriched when they are. "The heartbeat of this timely book is Adams's patient and thorough insistence that good faith and good reasoning should be helpful and not harmful to individual, collective, and global flourishing."

Sarah Zuniga (2018) gave a keynote on March 7 for a plenary session for the Network of Wider Church Youth Ministries (UCC) during their Reset for Renewal digital conference. The theme of the conference was Wrestling with Purpose. The keynote was titled: “Dissatisfied with the Status Quo: Antiracism is Liberation.”

Yvonne Gilmore (2001) and Teresa Hord Owens (1999) were among the participants in the installation service for Stephanie Kendell at National City Christian Church on March 5, 2023.