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.

The 2011 Convocation will be held June 10 at 5:30 p.m. Larry D. Bouchard, Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Virginia will speak. He studies intersections between religious thought (including theology, philosophy of religion, and ethics) and imaginative literature, especially prose fiction and drama. His forthcoming book, Theater and Integrity: Emptying Selves in Drama, Ethics, and Religion (Northwestern University Press, August 2011), reconceptualizes relations of selves and their "integrity" in ethics and theology, as refracted through studies of theatrical drama. He is also the author of Tragic Method and Tragic Theology: Evil in Contemporary Drama and Religious Thought and the coeditor of Interpreting Disciples: Practical Theology in the Disciples of Christ. An alumnus, he has been a member of the Board of Trustees since 1997 and served as its president from 2005-2010.

K. Everett Munson, Honorary Trustee for Life, died at his home in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, on his 95th birthday, May 22, 2011. He became a member of the Board of Trustees in 1966, and served as president from 1975-77 and 1986-89. For thirty-six years he was minister of First Christian Church of Maywood, Illinois. Near at hand to the Disciples Divinity House, he gave financial and development leadership to the Board of Trustees, and he was a beloved and influential teaching pastor for many House Scholars. He was a leader in the community and in Chicago and Illinois churches. One testimony to the significance and spirit of his leadership was the honorary doctorate granted by Eureka College, where he was a trustee, in 1959.

Born on May 22, 1916, in Galesburg, Illinois, he and his four younger sisters grew up in Monmouth, Illinois. He received his BA at Monmouth College in 1940. On their wedding day in 1940, Everett Munson and Virginia Leonard were both ordained to the ministry in the First Christian Church, Disciples of Christ. That fall, he began his studies at the University of Chicago as a Disciples House Scholar, eventually earning his BD. He served as pastor of numerous rural Illinois congregations, including Coldbrook, where he and Virginia served from 1940-44, and Mt. Morris, where they served from 1944-1949. In December, 1950, they accepted the call to Maywood. In their semi-retirement, the Munsons served several Chicago-area congregations as interim pastors.

Everett Munson was predeceased by Virginia Munson in 1998, and by three of his sisters. He is survived by a sister and a sister-in-law, and by his three children and their spouses, Dorothy (Munson) Steele and her husband Claude Steele, Carolyn (Munson) Gray and her husband Richard Gray, and Karl L. Munson and his wife Meg Munson, and by grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Services will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 26, at the Hoover Hall Memorial Chapel at 900 N Main, Monmouth, IL. Visitation will be at 1:00 pm. Interment will be at the cemetery following the memorial service.

A conference on May 19-20 will honor W. Clark Gilpin, the Margaret E. Burton Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Christianity and Theology, at his retirement from the Divinity School faculty. Entitled Writing Religion: Representation, Difference, and Authority in American Culture, the conference will ask how the project of "writing religion" has shaped questions about representation, difference, and authority in American culture. It features lectures by Divinity School colleagues Curtis Evans and Catherine Brekus, a panel discussion, and a lecture by Mr. Gilpin, "Writing Transcendence: When Words Exceed Themselves in Nineteenth-Century America."

Mr. Gilpin served as the Dean of the Disciples Divinity House from 1983-90, shaping a sense of call to leadership among House Scholars; he served as Dean of the Divinity School from 1990-2000, playing a remarkable and significant role in leading one of the major divinity schools in the world; and he was the first Director of the Marty Center, inaugurating new forms and venues of public conversation about religion. A historian of Christianity who studies the cultural history of theology in England and America since the seventeenth century, his first book was The Millenarian Piety of Roger Williams. While serving as dean, he wrote A Preface to Theology. Recent projects include work on the letter from prison as a genre of religious literature and a study of solitude in New England intellectuals. With Catherine Brekus, he recently edited a book entitled American Christianities. He earned his MA and PhD from the Divinity School as a Disciples Divinity House Scholar. He leads the Disciples History and Thought Seminar at the Disciples Divinity House, and he is a member of the Board of Trustees. Read the University's press release here.

Alumnus Ian J. McCrae died this morning at Belton Research Hospital in the greater Kansas City area. A memorial service will be held Monday, May 16, at 3:00 pm at Saint Andrew Christian Church in Olathe, Kansas, Holly McKissick, Senior Minister. He is survived by Cynthia McCrae, his wife of 60 years, and their five children, plus grandchildren, extended family, and many dear friends.

An educator, ethicist, and change agent, Ian James McCrae directed denominational efforts in human rights, economic justice, and global awareness for nearly thirty years, and also served in campus ministry and as a seminary professor. More recently, he was the Volunteer Assisting Minister at Saint Andrew Christian Church, where among other things, he had an important mentoring role with a new generation of Disciples House Scholars.

A native of Canada, he earned his A.B. from the University of Toronto and received his B.D. in 1950 from the University of Chicago as a Disciples Divinity House Scholar. In Chicago he met Cynthia Rice, who was a student at Chicago Theological Seminary. They married in 1950. He received his S.T.M. from Yale Divinity School in 1958; in 2006 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree by Christian Theological Seminary. In 2007, he was awarded DDH's Distinguished Alumnus Award. It commended him “for a lifetime of service across the breadth of the church” and specifically for his “keen mind, clear vision, and sharp wit and for vistas of mercy and justice opened because of them; for mentoring persons in ministry, amidst the priesthood of all believers; and for a life of faith that melds and models conviction, integrity, honesty, and humility.”