House Scholar Allie Lundblad and House Resident Kathryn Ray led worship in the style of Taizé on Monday, March 4, the final chapel service of the winter quarter.  Both Ms. Lundblad and Ms. Ray have visited the monastic community in Taizé, France.  Drawing on their experiences, Ms. Lundblad and Ms. Ray, both MDiv students, crafted a time of peace and reflection. The songs most associated with Taizé are sung as meditative chants, and the service provided an opportunity to renew spirits through song-filled prayer. The community in Taizé was founded by Brother Roger during World War II.  From its beginnings, it has been an ecumenical community committed to “live in communion with God through prayer and to be a leaven of peace and trust in the midst of the human family.” Over the years young people from around the world have come to visit the community and join in prayer and worship.  Today, the community in Taizé welcomes young adults for weeklong or weekend retreats throughout the year.

Alumnus Chuck Blaisdell, Senior Minister of First Christian Church, Colorado Springs, will speak at the first Monday forum of the Winter quarter. His talk is entitled, "17 things I've learned in ministry over 28 years, in 8 venues, 4 regions, 1 conference, and 2 denominations." Mr. Blaisdell is the former pastor of the Hilo Coast United Church of Christ in Honomu, Hawaii, and the former regional minister for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Northern California and Nevada. In May 2012, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Christian Theological Seminary (CTS) in Indianapolis, another of his alma maters. In selecting him, the school noted, "Chuck has one of the finest critical minds in the Disciples of Christ today in the sense that he has a compelling vision of God and the world emerging from serious dialogue with the Bible, tradition, and experience."

Alexis K. Vaughan received her MDiv degree at the University of Chicago's Convocation on December 14, and was recognized with other December graduates at a Divinity School ceremony and reception. Ms. Vaughan's senior ministry project was entitled, "Everyday I'm Hustlin': Exploring the Giving and Receiving Ends of Faith-based Empowerment Work." It offered theological and cultural commentary that built on her field experience in Kenya---an experience made possible through the Divinity School's International Ministry Travel Grant. She was involved in the "One Chicago, One Nation," a program to train leaders in interfaith/intercultural organizing sponsored by the Interfaith Youth Core, the Inter-City Muslim Action Network, and the Chicago Community Trust. She is a 2006 BA graduate of Duke University, where she was honored for her student service leadership. After graduating from Duke, she held a year long internship with Sojourners magazine. Her home congregation is the United Christian Parish of Reston, Virginia, where Joan Bell-Haynes is Senior Minister. Congratulations, Alexis!

On October 7, 2012, at Downey Avenue Christian Church in Indianapolis, Angela Pfile and Dean Kris Culp, joined with Senior Minister Sue Shadburne Call and the congregation to honor Rolland and Leverne Pfile. The recognition had been set in motion a year before. Angela Pfile and Doug Job, who had met at the Disciples Divinity House when they were both Scholars and married in the Chapel of the Holy Grail, decided to establish a fund in her parents’ names at the Disciples Divinity House. (Mr. Job, who is starting a new congregation in Athens, Georgia, Evergreen Christian Church, was not able to join the October celebration.)

Leverne Barlow and Rolland Pfile likewise met at the University of Chicago Divinity School when they were both graduate students there. Rolland, who earned his B.D. in 1964, was a Disciples Divinity House Scholar; Leverne was not—at that time, women were not admitted to DDH or eligible for its scholarships. Throughout his ministry and during an era of significant social change in church and society, Rolland G. Pfile provided prophetic leadership and critical support for other prophets. After serving congregations in Pennsylvania, he was called to be Executive Secretary of the Department of Church in Society of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), where he served from 1974-91. Under his leadership and with a remarkable staff, Church in Society helped Disciples to address racial and economic justice, peace, refugee resettlement, divestment in South Africa, and other issues. Later, Mr. Pfile held several interim ministries. From 1993-95, he was the convener of DDH’s centennial celebration and campaign committee.

Leverne B. Pfile was elected to the DDH Board of Trustees in the mid-1970s—about the time that women became eligible to be Disciples House Scholars. For over 20 years, until 1999, she gave crucial leadership including as Vice President and on two dean search committees. She helped to shape both what the Board did and how it did its work. Women who were Scholars during those years remember her presence, leadership, and advocacy as vitally important. In 1985, Ms. Pfile earned a M.S. in counseling and, in partnership with Downey Avenue Christian Church, opened Hope Counseling. In her practice, she has assisted persons in establishing sustaining patterns of relationship and interdependence.

Hubert G. Locke will conclude his distinguished service as a trustee at the end of this year. He was first elected in 1998. In addition to making estimable contributions to the Board of Trustees, he has regularly engaged DDH students. He is the John and Marguerite Corbally Professor of Public Service Emeritus at the University of Washington, where he also served as Dean of the Evans School of Public Affairs and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs. Mr. Locke is the author or editor of eleven volumes, including Searching for God in Godforsaken Times and Places: Reflections on the Holocaust, Racism, and Death and The Detroit Riot of 1967. He was a co-founder of the Annual Scholars Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches and a former member of the Committee on Conscience of the U.S. Holocaust Museum. He was a 1959 BD graduate of the Federated Faculty at the University of Chicago.

Mr. Locke has been awarded seven honorary doctorates and numerous other honors. One citation noted: "His words clarify, unite and motivate. His actions embolden and inspire. With an eye towards the future, he challenges all to look deeper, to understand, and to act for the good of humanity." That depiction reflects his contributions to public life in the city of Detroit and elsewhere, as well as his career as a scholar of the Holocaust and his academic leadership in the field of Public Affairs. It also applies to his service as a trustee of the Disciples Divinity House, where he has clarified, motivated, and helped to attune DDH to the future.

His charge to DDH's graduates at the 2007 Convocation distills his own lifework: Whatever else you do, in whatever post to which you go, wherever you find yourself and whomever you become, ... remember that people apparently thought of Jesus first and foremost as a prophet—as one who spoke God's truths to his time, as we believe he does to all ages. That's what you must do, wherever you find yourself, willing, ready and able to speak truth to power, to speak out on behalf of the oppressed, the poor, the dispossessed, the marginalized to those who have the ability to make a difference in the world they confront, but who would just as soon forget or ignore the fact that such people exist.

A new 30-minute documentary film explores "the new face of poverty in the U.S." through stories of people living at or below the poverty line. The film, by Emmy Award-winning writer and producer Linda Midgett, was produced in conjunction with Sojourners. Julian DeShazier, Senior Minister of University Church and a DDH trustee, appears in the film. It will be screened at DDH on Monday, November 5 at 7:00 pm. Mr. DeShazier will be present to introduce and discuss the film along with alumnus Beau Underwood, who is the Campaigns Manager with Sojourners. The 7:00 pm forum will be preceded by chapel at 5:30 pm, led by Disciples Divinity House Scholar Alexis Vaughan, and by dinner at 6:00 pm.

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.

Dennis Landon, President of Higher Education and Leadership Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), will preach the opening chapel service at the beginning of the 2012-13 academic year. He will also present the year's first forum, offering reflections entitled, More fun than you might expect: Confessions of a Denominational Bureaucrat.

After becoming its president in 1997, he led what had been the Division of Higher Education in clarifying its mission, focusing its energies on leader development, and hence adopting its present name. Mr. Landon continues to lead HELM's mission to nurture transforming leaders for the church and the larger society in partnership with Disciples-related colleges and universities, theological schools, and ministries to and with students.

A native of Canton, Pennsylvania, Dennis Landon is a graduate of Columbia University and of the Divinity School and the Disciples Divinity House of the University of Chicago. He was ordained in 1975 and served as pastor for congregations in Wisconsin and Indiana for 12 years. He then served as executive director of East Central Colleges, a consortium of independent colleges in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. He also served on the town council and as acting municipal judge for the Town of Bethany, West Virginia, and as a director for Wabash Valley Human Services as well as a variety of other community groups. Mr. Landon is a trivia expert and a contributor to a book of humorous essays on the work of Franz Bibfeldt, the world's most famous non-existent theologian. He is married to Lana Hartman Landon, a writer, teacher, and PhD alumna of DDH and the Divinity School; they live in St. Louis, Missouri.

Alumnus Frank Burch Brown, the Frederick Doyle Kershner Professor of Religion and the Arts at Christian Theological Seminary and the Alexander Campbell Visiting Professor of Religion and the Arts at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, will speak at the 2012 DDH Convocation. He is the author of several works including Inclusive yet Discerning: Navigating The Arts of Worship (2009) and the award-winning Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste: Aesthetics in Religious Life. He is the editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts. Mr. Brown is also a composer with twenty commissioned works to his credit.

The 2012 Convocation will be held June 8 at 6:00 p.m. with a reception following at 7:30 p.m. Convocation is a formal service that marks the end of the academic year and celebrates the achievements of graduating Disciples House Scholars and ecumenical community members. Held in the Chapel of the Holy Grail on the last Friday afternoon of the spring quarter, the service is planned by the graduates. Convocation precedes the University’s Spring Convocation, which takes place in the main quadrangle on Saturday morning.

House Scholar Thandiwe Gobledale has concluded a nine-month-long internship with First Christian Church in Greensboro, North Carolina. The internship was arranged by the Disciples Divinity House, which included providing a stipend for the internship, but the congregation was essential for the experience. The Disciples Divinity House is grateful for the wise leadership of and generous mentoring by Senior Minister Lee Hull Moses.

"A huge part of learning to be a pastor is having the chance to be one, and that is something that we are given, not something that we can claim for ourselves," Ms. Gobledale wrote to the congregation. "Your willingness to treat me as your pastor, to attend the Sunday School class or Lenten series that I led, to let me preach and listen to my sermons, to invite me into your homes and hospital rooms, to allow me to enter into your lives and the life of the church as a minister – this is what enabled me to learn what it means to be a minister. I think this takes trust and faith: trust that with God's help, we could grow together, and we would get through whatever challenges faced us. These last few months, you have taught me so much about what it means to be a community of faith: learning, growing, discerning, disagreeing, worshiping, and walking together as brothers and sisters in Christ with mutual respect and love."

Ms. Gobledale has returned to Chicago for Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) at Jackson Park Hospital this summer, and for her final year of MDiv studies beginning this fall. She joined the Greensboro congregation during her internship, and hopes to be ordained there. Ms. Hull Moses is also Vice President of the DDH Board of Trustees and a DDH alumna.