At their October meeting, the Board of Trustees elected J. Marshall Dunn to its membership. He is a former Alumni/ae Council President and the Senior Minister Emeritus of University Christian Church in Hyattsville, Maryland, a vibrant multi-racial congregation with significant outreach ministries. Marshall Dunn has given leadership across the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Following his retirement in October 2005, he served four months as the interim associate general minister of the Christian Church; he subsequently served as the interim regional minister in Capital Area. From 2011-12, he chaired a committee to develop a five-year strategic plan for Higher Education and Leadership Ministries (HELM). A beloved and energetic leader, he has been involved in camp counseling for nearly fifty years, including directing the Capital Area’s young adult conference and serving as chaplain for the senior high camp. After graduating from Hiram College, he became a Disciples Divinity House Scholar in 1965 and earned Master’s and D.Mn. degrees from the Divinity School. Marshall and Barbara Dunn have two grown children, Kristen, a DDH alumna herself who is the Director of Training at NIH, and Eric, an award-winning teacher, and three grandchildren.

Stephanie Paulsell

The Trustees celebrated Stephanie Paulsell’s sixteen years of Board leadership, including as Secretary, chair of the Scholarship Committee, and, in 2010-11, as chair of the dean’s review committee. An MA and PhD alumna who previously served as Director of Ministry Studies at the Divinity School, Ms. Paulsell is the Houghton Professor of the Practice of Ministry at Harvard Divinity School and the author of a forthcoming book on Virginia Woolf. She is married to Kevin Madigan (they met at the House, where he was an ecumenical resident), who is the Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School.

Dean Kris Culp commented, “We are grateful for Marshall Dunn’s and Stephanie Paulsell’s service. Such committed and visionary alumni/ae leadership has been and continues to be crucial for the strength of the Disciples Divinity House and its Board.”

Disciples Divinity House Scholar and third-year ministry student Alexis Vaughan has been involved in numerous campus and community-based initiatives. She is involved in the One Chicago, One Nation program, a joint effort of the Interfaith Youth Core, Inter-City Muslim Action Network, and Chicago Community Trust that focuses on interfaith/intercultural organizing. This past summer she traveled to Kenya to learn about a church-related youth empowerment initiative there. On Monday, October 24, at 7:00 pm, she will reflect on her experiences. Support from the Divinity School's International Ministry Travel Grant and a Hughey-Peery Grant from Higher Education and Leadership Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) made her study possible.

On Monday, October 10, Andrew Packman, Disciples Divinity House Scholar and third-year MDiv student, will reflect on his study in Bosnia this summer. He traveled and spoke extensively with religious leaders about the meaning of reconciliation and possibilities for it in Bosnia. His studies were funded by an International Ministry Travel Grant from the Divinity School and also supported by a Hughey-Peery Grant from HELM. The program, at 7:00 pm Monday, is free and open to the public.

Three individuals have been named entering Disciples Divinity House Scholars for the 2011-12 academic year.

Rachel Graaf Leslie, a member of University Christian Church in Hyattsville, Maryland, who recently served with the US Department of State in Bahrain, enters the AMRS program. A native of Iowa, Rachel earned the BA at Iowa State University, the Master of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, and a graduate diploma in Middle East Politics at the American University in Cairo; she is fluent in Arabic. Her next posting will be to the US Consulate General in Jerusalem. She has taken an unpaid leave to pursue further study of religion, particularly Islam.

Mark Lambert, a 2010 graduate of Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri, where alumna Jennifer Jesse was his academic adviser, has begun the MA program. He grew up in the independent Christian Church, and he is receiving a partial scholarship. He is interested in medieval Christianity, including religious dimensions of the Crusades and in leprosy as represented religiously and responded to in medieval Christianity and Islam.

Alexandra McCauslin enters the MDiv program. A 2008 cum laude graduate of the honors college at Michigan State, where she majored in Political Theory, she was an Americorps volunteer in central Detroit for two years following graduation. She grew up at Central Woodward Christian Church in the Detroit area. She hopes to return to Detroit to work toward racial reconciliation and with young adults and others who are disaffected by the institutional church.

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).