Sarah Zuniga (2018) has joined the National Council of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and has joined a group of writers and artists in collaboration on "Sacred Incantations: rituals of trans wisdom for every season" a deck of cards with artwork and rituals for trans and gender non-conforming folks being released in June, coordinated by enfleshed.

Jennifer Jesse (1997) retired in June 2023 as Professor Emerita of Philosophy and Religion from Truman State University after 23 years of teaching. She is now enjoying life in Kirksville, MO with John Dungan (1991) who continues working as the Disaster Program Specialist for the Central and Northern MO Chapter of the American Red Cross. 

David Cobb (1987) has recently been appointed Minnesota State Representative for the Association of Professional Chaplains. He is a Board Certified Chaplain approaching my fourth anniversary on the Spiritual Care staff at Children’s Minnesota Hospital, Saint Paul.

After thirteen years serving as the regional minister of the Illinois/Wisconsin region, including serving as regional minister for Michigan Disciples starting in 2022, Teresa Dulyea-Parker (trustee) announced her retirement, set for September 1, 2023. Teresa wrote in her retirement announcement: “Forty years ago, I was ordained into ministry by the faithful Disciples in Muskegon, MI. All I ever wanted was to be a good pastor—to help the people who would allow me to be their pastor through the dark and difficult moments of life. To give a word of hope, to acknowledge that God is love. That hasn’t changed. It is, though, time to give my benediction.”

Teresa served in ex officio capacity for the Disciples Divinity House Board of Trustees.

Laura Jennison Reed (2009) will conclude her time as senior pastor of Villa Park Christian Church in a celebration on June 11. Laura served first as a transitional minister in 2014, and has served as a the permanent pastor since 2016. Laura will begin an Accelerated Bachelors of Nursing program at Layola in the fall.

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.