The Rev. Dr. Almeda Wright, associate professor of religious education at Yale Divinity School and author of Teaching to Live: Black Religion, Activist-Educators, and Radical Social Change (Oxford University Press, 2024), will present at EMU’s annual Augsburger Lecture Series on Monday, Oct. 27, in the MainStage Theater (University Commons 170). The lecture starts at 7 p.m. and will be followed by a reception.

Her lecture will explore the lives and pedagogical genius of 20th century African American educators. 

“We will wrestle with the ways that teachers are often underacknowledged as exemplars of faith and social change,” states a description of her lecture. “We will focus on the lives of Anna Julia Cooper and Septima Clark, who, like many other 20th century African American women teachers, embodied an unwavering faith in God, in their cause, in their students, and in themselves that pushed them to continue working for justice despite efforts to thwart them.”

Wright’s research focuses on African American religion, adolescent spiritual development, and the intersections of religion and public life. Prior to her arrival at Yale, she served for four years as assistant professor of religion and youth ministry at Pfeiffer University and, before that, was an adjunct faculty member and teaching assistant at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. 

She is also the author of The Spiritual Lives of Young African Americans (Oxford, 2017) and the co-editor of Children, Youth, and Spirituality in a Troubling World.Ěý

Wright is an ordained minister of the American Baptist Churches and has been on the ministerial staff of several churches, including Union Baptist Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Victory for the World United Church of Christ in Stone Mountain, Georgia. 

She holds a PhD from Emory University, an MDiv from Harvard Divinity School, an MA in teaching from Simmons College, and a bachelor of science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Augsburger Lecture Series was founded in 1984 by Myron S. and Esther Augsburger to address “topics in the area of Christian evangelism and mission for the stimulation and development of a vision for evangelism and missions for the EMU community.”

For more information, visit .

The auditioned touring chamber choir was one of five ensembles chosen from around the world—joining groups from Indonesia, Kenya, Paraguay, and Switzerland—to perform songs at the event, The Courage to Love: Anabaptism@500, hosted by Mennonite World Conference. About 3,500 Anabaptists gathered in ZĂźrich for the celebration, including about 1,200 worshippers who filled the GrossmĂźnster church for the service, while many tens of thousands more watched the event live online. 

The 24 members of the Chamber Singers performed nine full concerts, two church services, and several impromptu outdoor gigs along their 2½-week European tour. In addition to their singing, the group’s EMU students and alumni visited museums, joined walking tours and history lectures, and explored Anabaptist heritage sites, a concentration camp, and the Anne Frank House.

Chamber Singers Director Dr. Benjamin Bergey ’11 said the choir performed for large crowds at nearly every concert and left a visible impact on many audience members through the quality of their singing and the poignancy of their message of hope and unity. “Several pieces moved dozens of people to tears, including ‘Prayer of the Children’ and ‘Ukuthula,’” he said. “Many audience members came up afterward to share how much hope it gave them to see so many young people so deeply invested in both the music and the message.”

Members of the Chamber Singers said their transformative experiences on the tour deepened their faith and strengthened their commitment to peace & justice. In Zürich, they shared meals with singers from around the world and traveled by bus and rehearsed together. “It was a wonderful intercultural experience,” Bergey said.

For Emma Nord ’25, an alto from Greenville, Illinois, one particularly memorable moment during the 500-year celebration came while witnessing Anabaptist and Reformed Church leaders wash each other’s feet at the service. “Their humility and desire for reconciliation was beautiful,” she said. “It was the experience of a lifetime, for sure.”

Joshua Stucky, a rising senior from Princeton, New Jersey, who sings bass in the Chamber Singers, also toured Europe with the choir in May 2023. But he said the music on this most recent trip resonated even more deeply with audiences. “I think our message of hope and unity crosses language barriers,” he said. “It carries so much weight right now.”

Thank you to all the alumni, friends, family, and donors who supported the tour in so many different ways!

Watch a recording of the Chamber Singers in the video above
and read more about the event in the Anabaptist World post below.

EMU Y-Serve, a student-run organization focused on volunteer service in the community, hosted the event on Friday and Saturday in partnership with the Harrisonburg Tacos 4 Life restaurant and the Feed My Starving Children nonprofit. For every meal sold at Tacos 4 Life locations, the company donates a portion of the proceeds to FMSC to help purchase Manna Packs. These nutrient-rich bagged meals, specially formulated for children, are then distributed by the nonprofit to schools, orphanages, medical clinics and feeding programs in about 100 countries. 

In its most recent fiscal year, the organization provided 375 million meals to mission partners worldwide, according to Brian Yeich, regional development adviser for FMSC. He said that the total meals packed at the EMU event exceeded the organization’s goal of 101,088 meals. 

“We are so grateful that God brought together FMSC, Tacos 4 Life, and the greater EMU community to feed God’s starving children, hungry in body and spirit,” he said. “To not only meet but actually exceed the meal-packing goal by over 12,000 meals is a testament to the people of the Harrisonburg community and the generosity of Tacos 4 Life, which sponsored these meals.”

On Friday and Saturday, Yoder Arena transformed into a meal-packing plant. Teams of volunteers scooped vitamin powder, dried vegetables, dehydrated soy and rice into bags, which were then weighed for consistency, sealed, and placed into boxes. The boxes were loaded onto a truck bound for the warehouse, where they will be distributed to children in need. 

As she finished a volunteer shift packing meals on Friday afternoon, EMU junior Sara Kennel, a member of the Y-Serve leadership team, said she had a wonderful experience working with a group of EMU students, staff and field hockey players, as well as students from Rocktown High School. She said she appreciated how FMSC partners with local organizations on the ground.

“They’re not just handing out meals,” she said. “They’re specifically committed to children for a designated length of time and, within that time, working to find other solutions to feed and provide for them more sustainably.”

The event at EMU has sparked a trend in the Harrisonburg community. Jeremy Hunter, operating partner of the Tacos 4 Life Harrisonburg location, said that James Madison University has agreed to host a MobilePack event at the Atlantic Union Bank Center on Sunday, April 27. You can sign up for that event .

These meal-packing events are part of a larger effort by the Arkansas-based Tacos 4 Life restaurant chain to donate and pack 10 million meals by June 2025 to celebrate its 10th anniversary.

Watch of the EMU MobilePack event in its Tell Me Something Good segment with Taylor Rizzari.

Thank you to all the volunteers who participated, including those from Park View Federal Credit Union, Merck, and Carmax.

“This project was a bear to organize with so many logistics and details, and the results were truly beautiful,” said Brian Martin-Burkholder, university chaplain for EMU. “Many volunteers reported how much fun it was to pack meals together for a few hours. We’re grateful for the level of participation this project received.”

What began as a book that aimed to celebrate the contributions of white allies in the fight for Black freedom, he said, morphed into a research project that questioned the effectiveness of those allies and their movements toward racial justice.

That book, Damned Whiteness: How White Christian Allies Failed the Black Freedom Movement, will publish in November by The University of North Carolina Press. Evans, who has worked on the book for the past seven years, introduced the book and shared some passages at Convocation on Wednesday in Lehman Auditorium.

Watch the full livestream of his talk .

Evans said work on his book began as a response to an invitation from scholars like Beverly Tatum, author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations about Race, to narrate the stories of white individuals and groups who have resisted racism.

“A number of books on abolitionists and a small number of texts on white allies have become available,” Evans said. “They told the stories of people like Mary White Ovington, a white socialist woman who helped W.E.B. Du Bois start the NAACP. They narrated biographies of people like Judge J. Waties Waring, who grew up in a segregationist household, but later in life became an advocate for racial justice.

“These stories of segregationists to anti-segregationists, from racist to anti-racist, from enemy of black folks to allies, are important stories, maybe even necessary stories. But what’s interesting about these texts that I mentioned is the things that they didn’t do.”

Damned Whiteness explores the work of “three of the most celebrated white Christian allies of the Black freedom era”: Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement; Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farm; and Ralph Templin, who was an American missionary in India. Each of these allies either created or led movements that launched them into similar trajectories with Black freedom organizations that opposed racial segregation, Evans said.

“But because the visions of these movements were disconnected from the Black communities they aimed to help, they failed to meet them on their path to liberation,” he said.

Evans is the co-editor of Between the World of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Christianity (Cascade, 2018). His teaching and research focus on the braided identity categories of race, religion, and nation.

EMU’s students, faculty and staff, rooted in the value of active faith, practice compassion, mutual love, and appreciation for the diversity of religious and cultural expressions represented in their community.

Hundreds of volunteers from the Harrisonburg community and beyond will help out at a MobilePack event at EMU next month, packing more than 100,000 meals to feed malnourished children around the world.

The EMU Y-Serve student club is hosting the two-day event (held March 21-22) in partnership with the Harrisonburg  restaurant and the  nonprofit. EMU students, faculty and staff, as well as volunteers from local church congregations, retirement communities, businesses and civic organizations will join together for the major meal-packing project at the EMU University Commons.

Register online for a two-hour shift at: 

Brian Martin Burkholder, university chaplain for EMU, said he noticed an  in the local newspaper about the Tacos 4 Life restaurant’s opening and felt that its mission of feeding malnourished children aligned with Y-Serve’s goal of serving others as the hands and feet of Jesus.

“As a university steeped in the Anabaptist faith tradition, EMU has emphasized companioning marginalized people and offering whatever resources we have to meet human need,” he said. “This is another way we can practice our core values of peace and justice and active faith.”

EMU senior Halie Mast, president of Y-Serve, helped organize the volunteer event.

“This is a huge project that our service club has taken on this year, and it’s probably the largest project I’ve ever helped plan,” she said. “A lot of time, planning, and prayer have gone into this undertaking, and I hope that Christ will be elevated through this work.”

This event is part of a larger effort by the Arkansas-based Tacos 4 Life restaurant chain to pack and donate 10 million meals by June 2025 to celebrate its 10th anniversary. For every item sold at Tacos 4 Life locations, the company donates a portion to Feed My Starving Children, which is used to purchase Manna Packs. These rice-based nutritious meal bags are given to missions and humanitarian organizations in more than 70 countries.

Jeremy Hunter, operating partner of the Tacos 4 Life Harrisonburg location, said the 100,000 meals donated by his store for the MobilePack event at EMU amounts to a $29,000 contribution to Feed My Starving Children.

“I’m excited for us to bring the Harrisonburg community together to pack 100,000 meals,” he said, adding that this is the first MobilePack event his location has partnered with. “You all at EMU have beaten JMU to the punch!”

Read more about the event in the Daily News-Record .

Civil discourse is strained, the principles of democracy are challenged, and social movements have laid bare injustices in the world, he said. 

Speaking to a crowd gathered at Martin Chapel on Wednesday, Jan. 29, he said that EMU students, rooted in the guiding verse of Micah 6:8 — “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God” — are uniquely equipped to heal a broken and fractured world. And, he added, they’re called to bridge the gap between “the world as it is and the world as it ought to be.”

“Those convictions [in Micah 6:8], which I’m certain shine through in your courses, recognize that the good life calls us into the world to participate in the healing work of reconciliation and peacemaking,” Roth said. “…Your calling, your vocation, regardless of your major, is really nothing more than to make God’s love and truth and healing visible in the world.”

Roth, project director of MennoMedia’s initiative, presented on “What is the Good Life? Insights from a 500-Year-Old Tradition.” Watch a video recording of his presentation .

Prior to his role at MennoMedia, Roth was a professor of history at Goshen College (1985-2022), where he also served as director of the Mennonite Historical Library and editor of the Mennonite Quarterly Review. He is the founding director of the Institute for the Study of Global Anabaptism at Goshen College.

His talk was the second of two campus worship services commemorating the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Anabaptist movement. Click for a video recording of the first service, “Exploring Virginia Mennonites: History, Faith and Culture” from Phil Kniss, retired senior pastor of Park View Mennonite Church.

Starting on Thursday, Jan. 30, a series of weekly lectures will delve into the history of Anabaptism through the five centuries stretching back to 1525. Roth will speak about early Anabaptism in the 16th century at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Eastern Mennonite School auditorium. For more information about these lectures, visit the website .

Events like this one demonstrate EMU’s commitment to its core value of active faith. As a community, we seek to embody faith in action and serve and learn together to repair harm and restore hope. Shaped by Anabaptist-Mennonite beliefs and practices and the life and teachings of Jesus, we practice compassion, mutual love, and appreciation for the diversity of religious and cultural expressions represented in our community.

“Every course in this series is brand new,” said Cook, academic program director for the seminary’s Pathways for Tomorrow grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc. and visiting assistant professor of Christian ethics. “We built an academic and professional degree that’s cohesive, integrative, and invites students to bring their whole person.”

The D.Min. program at Eastern Mennonite Seminary (EMS) is the first of its kind to combine study in the fields of justice, peacemaking, and theology. Students who graduate the three-year online program will receive a terminal degree that equips them to lead in faith-based settings, including in congregations, nonprofits, community organizing, and some teaching roles. The program is accredited by The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) and is pending accreditation approval by the Association of Theological Schools (ATS).

Applications are now being accepted for the first cohort of students starting in August 2025. Cohort capacity is limited, so applicants are encouraged to apply as soon as possible. Along with their applications, candidates must submit three references, an academic writing sample, and a personal statement. 

EMS looks forward to begin extending offers of admission in March, and will continue to review applications as part of a rolling admissions process. Scholarships will be awarded to D.Min. program applicants on the basis of academic merit, leadership strengths, and financial need.

Students in the online doctoral program will complete one course at a time, devoting about 15 hours per week to their coursework. Those courses can be completed fully asynchronously, allowing students — who also will be engaged in practicing ministry — to fulfill their personal and ministerial commitments.

The Rev. Dr. Sarah Ann Bixler, assistant professor of formation and practical theology and associate dean of EMS, said this flexibility and balance is essential in providing support for student success.

“We want our D.Min. program to contribute to leaders’ wholeness,” she said. “EMS will support students to complete their doctoral degree in a timely fashion with integrity and flexibility. Students will be encouraged to pursue doctoral research that enhances their current ministry, rather than draining energy from the heart of their calling.”

Each course in the D.Min. program is designed and taught by continuing-contract, full-time EMS faculty with terminal degrees (PhD or D.Min.) in specific fields relevant to the courses they’re teaching. That’s something not seen at a lot of other Doctor of Ministry programs, which are often run on the labor of contingent faculty, Bixler said.

“This struck me as a justice issue, unethical for the program we envisioned in peacemaking and social change,” she said.

The D.Min. program reflects ˛ÝÝŽÉçÇř’s core values of academic excellence, peace and justice, and active faith, providing a transformative education that prepares leaders to engage in ministry with integrity and purpose.

For more information about the Doctor of Ministry degree offered at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, visit:

Read more

• EMU News (July 2024): “Board of Trustees approves new Doctor of Ministry program”

• (January 2025): “Eastern Mennonite Seminary to offer first doctor of ministry program”

˛ÝÝŽÉçÇř joins the nation in mourning the late former President Jimmy Carter, who was known for his humility, strong Christian faith, and lifelong dedication to service, peace and human rights.

Carter, president from 1977-81, died on Dec. 29, 2024, at 100. Jan. 9, 2025, has been declared a National Day of Mourning to honor his legacy. 

His wife of 77 years, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, spoke at EMU’s (then Eastern Mennonite College) 68th annual Commencement on May 4, 1986.

“Jimmy and I have come to admire and love the Mennonites through our involvement with Habitat for Humanity,” she said during the commencement speech. 

It was Donald and Faye Nyce, parents of EMU alumni Ed ’86, Pam ’86 and Doug ’85, who introduced the Carters to the Habitat for Humanity organization, the former First Lady said. Donald and Faye Nyce volunteered at the organization’s headquarters in Americus, Georgia, and attended the Carters’ church in Plains.

“We developed some very close friendships with them… we came to love them very much when they were in our part of the world,” Rosalynn Carter said. “And it was through them that we learned about your [the Mennonites’] tradition of volunteer service.”

A full transcript of her speech can be read . 

In a 1986 , the Nyces described the Carters as strong Christians who were supporters of civil rights “long before a civil rights stand became the popular thing.”

“Jimmy was our Sunday school teacher,” Faye Nyce is quoted in the article. “We were surprised, then delighted and pleased with his knowledge and application of the Bible.”

A little more than two decades later, in 2009, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter received the Global Nonviolence Award from the Mahatma Gandhi Center at James Madison University. Former EMC President Myron Augsburger spoke at a ceremony honoring the Carters, and EMU’s Shenandoah Valley Children’s Choir (SVCC) sang at the ceremony.

In a recent Facebook post, Ken J. Nafziger, professor emeritus of EMU Music, shared his memories of meeting Jimmy Carter when the Chamber Singers were invited to sing at his church.

The new statement reads:

“We the community of learners—students, faculty, and staff—of ˛ÝÝŽÉçÇř value:

Academic Excellence
As a teaching university, we prioritize student learning. Our approach to teaching and learning is equitable and engaged as we seek to inspire curiosity, creativity and academic achievement. 

Peace and Justice
As a leader in peacebuilding, conflict transformation, and restorative justice, we pursue peace by teaching and practicing intercultural understanding, justice and equity, and environmental sustainability. We value diversity and seek to form unifying, inclusive leaders.

Active Faith
As a community, we seek to embody faith in action and serve and learn together to repair harm and restore hope. Shaped by Anabaptist-Mennonite beliefs and practices and the life and teachings of Jesus, we practice compassion, mutual love, and appreciation for the diversity of religious and cultural expressions represented in our community.”

The goal of the process, as outlined in the Pathways of Promise strategic plan, was to invest in clarity and consistency regarding EMU’s values. These values will be consistently communicated across the university and used to amplify the EMU value proposition. The refreshed values connect more seamlessly with the university vision statement, which frames the strategic plan.

The process began in January 2024 with discussions about the scope of the review and revision, an audit of several peer schools’ value statements, conversations with the Executive Leadership Team about essential components, and drafting of a test revision. Throughout the spring, a total of 14 focus group sessions were held across campus, which included three student meetings, two Board of Trustees committees, and nine faculty and staff meetings. About 40 students and 100 faculty and staff participated in these sessions. Feedback from the focus groups was gathered and analyzed and used to create a final revision. The Board of Trustees approved the new statement at its June 14 meeting.

Dean Daniel Ott facilitated the re-envisioning. “The campus conversation about shared values was an inspiring process,” he said. “Our students, faculty, staff, and supporters love EMU. This process gave them an opportunity to name and articulate the values that drive our work.”

EMU’s previous values statement read: “EMU’s mission and vision are grounded in the enduring biblical values of Christian discipleship, community, service, and peace.”

For more information about EMU’s 2023-28 strategic plan, Pathways of Promise: Preparing Tomorrow’s Unifying Leaders, visit: