Ayanna Johnson, former First Vice Moderator of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and current Director of Community Life at Chicago Theological Seminary, will preach the opening service in the Chapel of the Holy Grail on October 3 at 5:30 pm. Rev. Johnson is an alumna of the Disciples Divinity House and, a graduate of Yale University, and a MDiv/AM in Social Service Administration graduate of the University of Chicago. From 2006-10, she served as DDH's Minister-in-Residence; through that initiative, funded in part by the Oreon E. Scott Foundation, she provided Disciples House Scholars with a look at new church development and with resources in cross-racial leadership and ministry.

The Board of Trustees honored Eddie Evans Griffin on October 29. She has served as an officer of the board since 1999 and is the current Vice President. She will conclude her service in December 2011. Board President Chad Martin, friends Dolores Highbaugh and Corene Washington, and Dean Kris Culp paid tribute to her guidance, savvy, and care and to her leadership for several special efforts. Present for the celebration in addition to the members of the Board, were her son Brian Griffin and grandsons. Eddie Griffin is a retired administrator of the Chicago Child Care Society and a former Moderator of the Christian Church in Illinois and Wisconsin. The DDH community looks forward to continuing to enjoy her presence at Monday dinners, programs, and chapel services.

Tod and Ana Gobledale write from Brockley and Lewisham in southeast London, where they serve congregations: "Many shop fronts on Brockley Road near St. Andrew’s United Reformed Church, our church, are tightly closed, their metal fronts lowered. People scurry home from Brockley station, into the safety of their locked homes. Few singers came out last night for choir practice; many were held back by street blockades. Bible Study and Weight Watchers were cancelled this evening. The church sits empty.

"What commenced as a peaceful demonstration against the killing of Mark Duggan by police, caught fire and has spread like wildfire. We watch images of violence, looting and vandalism on our TV and computer screens – from Lewisham to Bristol to Birmingham. We share with others, wondering what has happened, how to respond.

"One place to start our response is with prayer. So we invite you to join us in prayer for our community—Brockley & Lewisham, our city—London, and our country—Great Britain. May our churches and all faith communities across the city be beacons of light in the darkness, and speak words of faith and hope. We share this prayer, slightly altered, from Rev. Pat Took, President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain:

Pray for the peace of the city, may peace be within your homes and security on your streets. Pray for the family and friends of Mark Duggan as they absorb the shock of his violent and premature death – pray that the circumstances of his death may become clear for everyone to see and that those who loved him will have confidence that justice has been done. Pray for everyone who has been traumatised by the events of the weekend – the police officers who have been injured, and their families – those who have lost homes and businesses – those who have lost their sense of living in a friendly and safe place. Pray for our police, that there will be among them exceptional men and women, able to understand the hopes and fears of all the different individuals and groups they deal with, able to uphold the law with wisdom, integrity and discretion, able to step over prejudice, their own and other peoples'. Pray for entrepreneurs and business people with drive and energy to create sustainable, worthwhile jobs for folk living across our country. Pray for mothers and fathers to stand steady and faithful at the heart of their families, and offer the disciplines of love, truth and example. May they model how to seek justice without violence. Pray for the young, that they will listen to the voices calling them to live courageously and freely, and will turn away from those influences calling them to alienation and victimhood. Pray for the future when resources may be scarce, jobs and homes hard to come by. May we be those who demonstrate a genuine concern for our neighbours, the salt that resists the tendency to care only for ourselves, the light that reveals all the many dimensions of well being that do not depend on affluence. Peace be within you. Amen (Source and original version: Baptist Union of Great Britain)."

Disciples House Scholar Andrew Packman is in Bosnia this summer, studying reconciliation. His travel and studies are funded by an International Ministry Studies Grant from the Divinity School and additional funding through HELM. Follow his blog, The Rarer Action, at http://the-rarer-action.blogspot.com/

The Alumni/ae Council honored Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore as the 2011 recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus/a Award at the DDH Luncheon during the General Assembly of the Christian Church, meeting in Nashville. The luncheon was held July 11 at the Nashville Renaissance Hotel (more information here).

Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore is the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Pastoral Theology at the Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion of Vanderbilt University. Her research in religion, psychology, and culture, pastoral and practical theology, and women and childhood studies focuses on understanding the person and lived theology in the midst of everyday struggles, such as illness, dying, working, and parenting. A Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology, she is the author, co-author, and editor of numerous chapters, articles, and twelve books, including Children and Childhood in American Religions (Rutgers 2009), Faith’s Wisdom for Daily Living (Fortress 2008), and In the Midst of Chaos: Care of Children as Spiritual Practice (Jossey-Bass 2006). She is currently editing the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology; compiling Christian Theology in Practice: Discovering a Discipline (Eerdmans), a collection of her essays in pastoral and practical theology; and working on a book, Lived Theology: Understanding its Politics, Rehabilitating its Place. She has served as president of the International Academy of Practical Theology, president of the Association of Practical Theology, and co-chair of two new program units of the American Academy of Religion, the Consultation on Childhood Studies and Religion and the Group on Practical Theology. She became a Disciples Divinity House Scholar in 1978 and completed her M.A. and Ph.D. at University of Chicago (1980, 1986), and was ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). In 1994, she co-chaired DDH’s Centennial Campaign and Celebration with Don Browning.

The Alumni/ae Council cited her distinguished contributions to the field of practical theology and to feminist moral reflection, her contributions to the wider academy and to the profession—especially to women in the profession. They noted her teaching, service, and mentorship at Vanderbilt, and her long record of service to and support of this Disciples Divinity House—and indeed of both DDHs. Bonnie Miller-McLemore is the sixteenth recipient of the award, which was established in 1979, and the first alumna to receive it. Previous recipients, in chronological order, were Arthur Azlein, Irvin Lunger, Barton Hunter, Robert Thomas, Marvin Smith, William Weaver, Frank Mabee, Dan Genung, John Bean, J. Robert Moffett, Samuel Pearson, Raymond Williams, M. Ray Schultz, Ian McCrae, and Don Browning.

Several Disciples Divinity House alumni/ae and trustees will be featured at the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), meeting in Nashville, July 9-13. Trustee Holly McKissick, who is senior and founding minister of Saint Andrew Christian Church, Olathe, Kansas, will preach the opening worship on Saturday evening. Michael Kinnamon and Yvonne Gilmore are among the Sunday morning guest preachersin local congregations. On Monday evening, the ministry of David Vargas will be celebrated at a dinner. Vargas, a DDH alumnus and trustees, has served Overseas Ministries for 28 years, including as its President since 2003. Kinnamon, Ken Brooker-Langston, and Jen Kottler are among workshop presenters; Joe Blosser, Adam Frieberg, Sandhya Jha, and Tim Lee are members of planning teams for learning tracks and worship; Dennis Landon and Mark Miller-McLemore will be hosting events and making reports.

Alumni/ae Council President Michael Karunas will host DDH's own luncheon on July 11, at 12:15 pm in the Music City Ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel. Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Pastoral Theology at the Divinity School and the Graduate Department of Religion of Vanderbilt University, will receive the Distinguished Alumnus/a Award. Dean Kris Culp will bring remarks and updates. (More information about the luncheon here).

Garry Sparks, a June PhD graduate, has accepted a visiting professor appointment at Christ College, Valparaiso University (the honors college). This year, in addition to being a DDH Scholar, he was the Divinity School’s Mellon Dissertation Fellow, the highest dissertation award. His dissertation, which focuses on sixteenth-century texts that he translated from the original K'iche' language into both Spanish and English, uses cultural ethnography as essential to theological method. He argues that the Americas’ “first theology” emerged in a mutually transforming dialogue between Christian theology and Mayan spirituality—a dialogue that is conveyed in a variety of historical texts as accessed through a contemporary process of dialogical translation.

Chris Dorsey, also a PhD student in theology, anticipates graduation in December. Until March, he was the Vice President for Marketing and Development at Chicago Theological Seminary. He is writing on the medicalization of health care in Senegal. He has been named the 2011 Faculty Fellow at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan.

Joe Blosser, a June graduate in the Religious Ethics area, wrote his dissertation on Ernst Troeltsch and Adam Smith. He will move from DePaul University in Chicago to a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of Religion and Philosophy and Director of Service Learning at High Point College, a United Methodist school in North Carolina. The college's service-learning program in will be inaugurated in 2012-13 under his leadership.

Santiago Piñón has been named to a tenure-track position in the Department of Religion at Texas Christian University; he is now completing his dissertation and is aiming for fall graduation. A student of theology, he attends to theological interventions between colonial power and the indigenous peoples of the Americas, in particular, the sixteenth-century Spanish Dominican Francisco Vitoria and his work, the Law of the Nations.

All four are ordained Disciples of Christ ministers. Mr. Sparks and Mr. Piñón both completed their MDiv degrees as well as their PhD work at the University of Chicago Divinity School as Disciples House Scholars.

“Throughout my entire time at DDH I have tried to be true to myself and have resisted becoming someone other than the person I was when I arrived,” Mr. Piñón commented. “Of course, I have experienced change. . . . Yet, the change I have gone through hasn’t changed me. I am still the guy who hates wearing ties and a coat, who prefers cheap beer to fine wine, and who reads Tillich, Unamuno, Dussel, and Nietzsche. Nonetheless, I have changed. In addition to becoming a more critical scholar, academic, and theologian, I have also become a more patient husband, a caring father, and, I hope, a better friend. These changes would have been impossible if it had not been for the Disciples Divinity House. . . . I owe a debt that can never be repaid.”

Matthew Myer Boulton has been named the sixth president of Christian Theological Seminary. He earned the PhD in theology from the University of Chicago in 2003 and the MDiv from Harvard Divinity School (1998). Matt and Elizabeth Myer Boulton, who is a DDH alumna, were married in the Chapel of the Holy Grail at the Disciples Divinity House; they were ordained together as ministers in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

Since 2007 he has been Associate Professor of Ministry Studies at Harvard Divinity School. He taught previously at Andover Newton Theological School. He is the author of God Against Religion: Rethinking Christian Theology through Worship and of Life in God: John Calvin, Practical Formation, and the Future of Protestant Theology (forthcoming this fall). The Myer Boultons are among the co-founders of the bluegrass gospel band, Butterflyfish, and of SALT, a not-for-profit project dedicated to reclaiming and sharing the beauty of Christian life through film, photography, music, poetry, and ideas.

The annual convocation of the Disciples Divinity House was held June 10 in the Chapel of the Holy Grail. Alumnus and former Board President Larry Bouchard, who is Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Virginia, was the speaker. Four Disciples House Scholars who received their PhD degrees in June or will receive them later in 2011 were honored: Joseph Blosser, Chris Dorsey, Santiago Piñón, and Garry Sparks. Receiving MDiv degrees in 2011 are House Scholars Anna Liv Gibbons, Aaron Smith, and Jonathan Wallace, and ecumenical community members James Hoke, Michael Le Chevallier, Elsa Marty, and Pumsup Shim. House residents Diana Brown, Jennifer Jaszewski, Michael Lichens, Christopher Soltys, Cally Steussy, and Aaron Wooden received or will receive other Master’s degrees.

The first DDH Convocation was held in 1933. Recent speakers have included Don Browning, W. Clark Gilpin, Ana Gobledale, Claudia Highbaugh, Verity Jones, JoAnne Kagiwada, Hubert Locke, Daisy Machado, Holly McKissick, Mark Miller-McLemore, Stephanie Paulsell, David Vargas, Clark Williamson, and Geunhee Yu.

Sybel A. Thomas, church leader, and remarkable spirit, died June 7 at her home in Chicago. She was a trustee of the Disciples Divinity House of the University of Chicago for more than fifteen years. Through the House and in many other contexts, she and her late husband Harvey, who died in December, invested significant time and attention in young people and in future leaders.

Sybel Thomas was a member of the first moderator team at the first General Assembly of the newly restructured Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and thus also the first African American and first lay woman to serve as one of the moderators. She held many other crucial leadership roles throughout the church and in community organizations over the years, including as president of the World Christian Women's Fellowship and as an Elder of Park Manor Christian Church in Chicago.

Sybel and Harvey Thomas shared 62 years of marriage. They are survived by their son Craig and by grandchildren; another son, Harvay Jr., preceded them in death. The memorial service has been set for Friday, June 24, at Park Manor Christian Church in Chicago. The service will start at 6:30 pm with the wake at 5:30 pm.