Watch Professor Pathania’s star turn in Origin

See the 2023 feature-length film that Variety called “a masterpiece.” Dr. Gaurav J. Pathania, assistant professor of sociology and peacebuilding at EMU, portrays Indian scholar and social reformer Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in this film (available to stream on Hulu) about historical caste systems. 

Read our story about how he landed the role, and watch the trailer below.

Warm up your winter with a cafeteria favorite

Just because you can’t make it to the caf doesn’t mean its tasty, comforting dishes can’t come to you! Try making your own tomato basil pie, a favorite among faculty, staff, and students alike, at home using this recipe lovingly provided by Darren Campbell, food service director for Pioneer College Caterers.

Need a little extra pick-me-up? Here’s a Common Grounds-inspired drink recipe from Tyler Goss, director for student engagement and leadership development.

Read Professor Evans’ new book

The latest book from Dr. David Evans, professor of history and intercultural studies and associate dean of Eastern Mennonite Seminary, Damned Whiteness offers an unflinching look at the efforts by religious white progressives in the fight for Black freedom. Grab a physical copy of the page-turner at Parentheses Books (76 W Gay St., Harrisonburg) or download one online as an .

Seeking something a little more fantastical? Check out the series from Liesl West ’18 and by Christine Benner Dixon ’04.

Share your favorite indoor snow day activities in the comments below!

When Eastern Mennonite Seminary Professor David Evans set out to write his book about religious white progressives in the fight for Black freedom, he didn’t expect that his main thesis would flip by nearly 180 degrees.

“I thought I was going to be writing about white allies who could be exemplars for other white people in predominantly white institutions,” said Evans, professor of history and intercultural studies and associate dean of the seminary. “And then I stumbled onto some problems and thought, Maybe we should spend some time talking about where we’re going wrong.”

After seven years of research and writing, Damned Whiteness: How White Christian Allies Failed the Black Freedom Movement is just weeks away from publication. The book, published by The University of North Carolina Press and due out on Oct. 28, offers an unflinching history of white allies—namely Clarence Jordan, Dorothy Day, and Ralph Templin—and the fracturing relationships that followed when their strategies and philosophies didn’t align with Black leaders and communities.

“That’s what my book is trying to figure out: if both groups were willing to put in all this energy and risk their lives to end Jim Crow segregation, why couldn’t they work together?” Evans said. “I’m suggesting that part of it is a kind of arrogance, a haughtiness, that white folks believe they know better than Black people about what needs to be done.”

Damned Whiteness explores the work of three white allies: Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farm, an interracial Christian community in Americus, Georgia, and spiritual father of Habitat for Humanity; Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement; and Templin, a Christian missionary who studied nonviolence in Gandhi’s India. The 302-page book serves as both a warning and call to action, but also as a lament, reflecting on what went wrong and what could have been.

Rather than confronting the systems and economic structures that reinforced racial inequality, these white allies focused more narrowly on creating spaces to cultivate interracial friendships, Evans said. “Had they been able to come together with Black folks to really hear what they were saying, see what they were doing, and join in solidarity with them around freedom instead of just trying to be friends, I’m curious to see what could have happened.” 

Evans is set to present his book at George Mason University in November and has also been invited to appear on several podcasts to discuss it. 

Rev. Dr. Sarah Bixler, dean of the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences division, said the book is expected to make a splash after its release. “This book represents the kind of critical historical scholarship that we value at EMU,” she said. “Thanks to our expert faculty’s commitment to researching and writing with integrity, Dr. Evans’ book will drive important conversations in religion and society deeper, and open new opportunities for our students to engage with this level of work.”

About the professor

Evans is 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.

He holds a master’s degree from Wesley Theological Seminary, in the history of Christianity, a second master’s from Drew University in historical studies, and a doctorate degree in historical studies from Drew University Graduate Division of Religion. In concert with his teaching and scholarship, Evans practices a local “eco-lutionary” lifestyle that promotes a sustainable future for the diverse people of the Shenandoah Valley Watershed.

In addition to the publisher’s website, the book is available to preorder at online booksellers including , , and .

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.

EMU’s campus community entered into a wave of critical discussions about faith, race, and gender this semester. Three book clubs emerged independently, while yet another reading group and a film series came from projects in a graduate counseling course focusing on multiculturalism.

Faculty, staff, and student participants have wrestled with questions about how race, racism, faith, gender, and sexism influence power, theological formation, campus life, and beyond.��

These book studies are making visible normative structures in our community that limit our capacity to experience one another in all of our complexities. That is good work. We cannot correct that which we cannot, or refuse, to see. I think we are awakening to realities of the ways anti-blackness functions on our campus.��

Professor David Evans

Deep reading, deep listening

supported 10 faculty and staff with copies of by Willie James Jennings. Seminary instructor Sarah Bixler and Professor David Evans facilitated.

As part of the 2021 Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration, Evans and co-facilitator Ezrionna Prioleau ’17 led more than 20 faculty members and students in studying by Ibram X. Kendi.

Supported by the , a group of faculty and staff read three books on the themes of race, faith, and justice, contributing towards an action plan to develop and deepen commitment to and competency in interfaith engagement and racial justice. (Read more specifics below.) Facilitators were Tala Bautista, adjunct faculty for Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, and Mikayla Waters-Crittenton, associate director for student accountability and restorative justice.

Two groups of graduate students in Professor Jennifer Cline’s two-semester multicultural counseling course series created and co-facilitated community advocacy projects within the EMU community: 

• Sarah Morehouse, Mary Rebekah Cox and Richard Grosse led 10 undergraduate and graduate students and staff members in studying by Rebecca Solnit.
• A larger group of 11 graduate students facilitated a semester-long series “Somethin’ to Talk About: A Film and Discussion Series Around Race.” The three-part series included viewings of films ” (California Newsreel); ; and a pre-recorded open discussion on race and its personal impact between four of EMU’s graduate counseling students: two women of color and two white women. The events were open to the campus community.

‘A deep interest and hunger’

“There is a deep interest and hunger among students, staff, and faculty to engage in a process of reckoning and reform related to racial, sexual, and gender equality, as well as other identities,” said Morehouse, a student in the master’s in counseling program.

Men Explain Things to Me focuses “on how power is wielded in society and the resulting inequalities, and … the relationship between gendered language, the silencing of women and those with non-binary identities, disbelief in their experiences, and gender-based violence,” Morehouse said.

She and co-hosts Cox and Grosse were “impressed and heartened by the way that members engaged with the material and each other in a sensitive and impassioned way, recognizing the need for change at the individual, institutional, and cultural levels.”

Graduate student Helen Momoh went into the book club with measured expectations. However, “words cannot express the profound experience during the times we met,” Momoh said. “It was empowering, refreshing, and healing for me to be able to share within this space. I guess the space was such that it gave me comfort. Everyone was ready to listen, even when some of us just met for the first time.”

The interfaith group read , by angel Kyodo Rev. Williams, Lama Rod Owens, and Jasmine Syedullah; , by Saher Selod, and , by Felipe Hinojosa. 

In addition to personal engagement with Selod, a colloquium speaker this semester, the group also learned from guest speaker Dr. Cathy Campbell, associate professor in the nursing department and chair of acute and speciality care at University of Virginia. Campbel is an ordained Buddhist chaplain, according to group participant Trina Trotter Nussbaum, associate director at CIE. “Dr. Campbell spoke with us from these vantage points while we were reading the Radical Dharma book and it was a huge privilege,” she said. (On a side note, Hinojosa visited campus in 2018).

More than 20 faculty members and students have been meeting over Zoom to discuss How to Be an Antiracist.��The group is a long-term project linked to EMU’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration. The size of the group can be challenging for Evans and co-facilitator Prioleau.

“That said, I experience the group as open to new ideas and interested in growth,” Evans said. “We’ve wrestled with the strength of Kendi’s argument that one cannot take a neutral stance on racism, you are either acting in racist or antiracist ways. We’ve also wrestled with some concerns we have over Kendi’s analysis of power that seems to equate anti-blackness with anti-whiteness. These are crucial conversations for our learning community.”

After Whiteness has also sparked critical questions for the 10 faculty and staff studying it. Jennings explores how theological formation, when rooted in values of white, self-sufficient masculinity, shapes people for possession, control, and mastery; rather than connection with God, self, and others.

“We are digging deep to analyze how we educate theologically, interact as a community, and operate as an institution,” said Bixler, a co-facilitator. “We are imagining new ways of being and doing that move us toward holistic and life-giving formation that subverts the distorted formation Jennings describes.”

Evans acknowledged that book studies alone cannot heal communities, or ensure everyone feels seen and heard within them. But perhaps they can plant a seed. 

“These book studies are making visible normative structures in our community that limit our capacity to experience one another in all of our complexities. That is good work,” he said. “We cannot correct that which we cannot, or refuse, to see. I think we are awakening to realities of the ways anti-blackness functions on our campus. We are also growing in our awareness of the ways we are seduced into valuing whiteness in our assessments of students and our presentation of ourselves.”

Professor David Evans, who is director of cross-cultural programs and teaches history and intercultural studies at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, will present a virtual colloquium on January 20 at 4:15 p.m. His talk is titled “Damned Whiteness! White Christian Race Relations in the Black Freedom Era,” and will be publicly live streamed on ��

“Organizers of Black freedom movements criticized racial segregation for incentivizing anti-Black violence and institutionalizing inequality,” Evans explained. “White Christian pacifists also opposed segregation, but they viewed it as an affront to their vision for a colorblind society. These pacifists focused on forming fellowship with Black people rather than laboring for freedom with Black people, thereby neglecting the difficult work of dismantling anti-Black policies and disarming white power.”

The presentation will examine “how white antiracism efforts are impaired when white Christians fail to align with Black leadership by analyzing the race relations activism of Dorothy Day, Clarence Jordan, and Ralph Templin in the context of the Black freedom movement,” Evans said.

Evans’s research interests engage the braided realities of racial, religious, and national identities. His current project investigates the practices of white Christian agrarian pacifist resistance to Jim Crowism in the context of Black freedom activism.

He is the co-editor, with EMU professor Peter Dula, of Between the World of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Christianity (Cascade, 2018). ��

Evans holds a master’s degree from Wesley Theological Seminary, in the history of Christianity, a second master’s from Drew University in historical studies, and a doctorate degree in historical studies from Drew University Graduate Division of Religion. In concert with his teaching and scholarship, Evans practices a local “eco-lutionary” lifestyle that promotes a sustainable future for the diverse people of the Shenandoah Valley Watershed.

Heath’s main lecture at EMU, open to the public on Wed. evening at 7 p.m. in the seminary’s Martin Chapel, is titled “Is There Good News for a World in Trauma?” Heath will address what it means to be a “missional church” ministering to individuals and neighborhoods dealing with trauma.

Other public events include:

•  Wednesday, Nov. 20, 10:10 a.m. – Convocation, Lehman Auditorium, on “Reclaiming Apostolic Soul.”
• Thursday, Nov. 21, 11 a.m. – Seminary service, Martin Chapel, on “Wilderness Credentials.”

Heath will also convene a workshop for local pastors called “Forming and Leading Micro-Communities of Hope,” offering guidance for those starting “new forms of faith communities in post-Christendom contexts.” She will visit with students, faculty, and visiting pastors while on campus – including a breakfast with area pastors.

The pastors’ breakfast is an ongoing corollary to the Augsburger series, which Park View Mennonite Church Pastor Phil Kniss says aims “to open up mutually beneficial dialogue between area Anabaptist-Mennonite pastors, and missional practitioners and theologians from outside the Anabaptist stream.”

“We are excited to have Dr. Heath, with her scholarship and practice in new approaches to evangelism and Christian community, with us for this year’s Augsburger lecture,” said Andrew Suderman, assistant professor of Bible, religion and theology.  “Her background in the field of trauma and ministry will help our community grapple with what it means to participate in the ‘Good News’ and how to embody it with, among, and as people who have experienced trauma.  She will help us reflect on how following Jesus in our broken and violent world challenges us to meet people where they are – physically, spiritually and socially – and what it looks like to offer hope and healing.”

Heath writes that her life’s work is “interdisciplinary, weaving together the study of Scripture, theology, and Christian spirituality in ways that help the church to reach beyond its walls and into the community.” This approach of taking “church to the people,” as Heath says, characterizes the aims of the Neighborhood Seminary, where Heath is president and co-founder.

The Neighborhood Seminary offers a two-year, non-degree program which provides theological and spiritual education to lay people using the cohort model. Currently, four cohorts are active in North Carolina and Virginia. The seminary’s goal is to teach students “how to neighbor well, how to help their neighborhoods flourish, and how to foster life-giving community,” according to its .

Her newest book, (Abingdon Press, 2020) delves into the “spiritual discipline of celebration when facing grief, trauma, failure, or a dark night of the soul.” It is part of the eight-volume Holy Living Series, of which Heath is also an editor. 

As an educator, Heath served as dean of the Divinity School at Duke University, and as a professor at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University and the Ashland Theological Seminary.

Heath now lives at an intentional Christian community and farm in North Carolina, Spring Forest, where she serves as the community abbess.

The 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.”

Previous Augsburger lecturers include: 

• 2018: N.T. Wright, Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland. Wright presented on “Promised Glory: Thinking Straight about God and the World.” Article podcast
• 2017: James Krabill ‘71, senior mission advocate with Mennonite Mission Network, who convened a panel with Leonard Dow ’87 and Esther Augsburger ’72, all alumni who have served in Christian evangelism and missions. Article podcast
• 2016: The Reverend Canon Dr. Scot McKnight, New Testament scholar, theologian, historian, and author. Article podcast
• 2015: Nelson Okanya MDiv ’03, president of Eastern Mennonite Missions, who spoke on the changes in global missions over the last half-century. Article podcast

The Augsburger Committee includes Professor Andrew Suderman (co-chair), Professor David Evans (co-chair), Technical Services Librarian Jennifer Ulrich, Campus Pastor Brian Martin Burkholder, and Emily North, administrative assistant to the Dean of the School of Theology, Humanities, and the Performing Arts.

Participants came from 13 states and two countries, and represented nine denominations, including Mennonite, Quaker, Church of the Brethren, Disciples of Christ, Church of God of Christ, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian and United Church of Christ.

Hurst and the planning committee selected Mark 4:35-41 as the guiding scripture.

“Navigating these times as followers of Jesus and church leaders does feel like charting unknown waters in a choppy and stormy sea,” Hurst said in her welcome. “The biblical story found in Mark 4 of the disciples crossing the story sea with Jesus seemed appropriate for our repeated hearing and reflection over these days.”

Maren Tyedmers Hange, co-pastor of Charlottesville Mennonite Church, painted a special piece of art, featuring an empty boat floating in storm-swept seas, for contemplation. The boat is “intentionally empty as a invitation to join Jesus there,” said Veva Mumaw, seminary admissions director and member of the planning committee.

Expanded worship opportunities throughout the three days led the gathered through interpretation and reflection on the scripture passage. Keynote addresses were provided by David Evans, associate professor of history and intercultural studies and the director of cross cultural programs at Eastern Mennonite Seminary; Sue Park-Hur, denominational minister for leadership development and transformative peacemaking for Mennonite Church USA; and John Pavlovitz, author and Methodist pastor.

Pavlovitz provided three keynotes, addressing parts of the scripture each day. A pastor for two decades, writer and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina, Pavlovitz blogs about. His books include A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community (Westminster John Knox Press, 2017) and HOPE and Other Superpowers: A Life-Affirming, Love-Defending, Butt-Kicking, World-Saving Manifesto (Simon & Schuster, 2018).

In an “upsidedown world” that corrodes hope and faith, followers of Christ – seeking to embody the compassion modeled by Jesus, “to intercede on the behalf of people in need” – often feel anger and disillusionment.

“You have the eyes of Jesus and the heart of Jesus that moves you towards people who no one else knows, who everyone else avoids, who no one else hears,” Pavlovitz said. The “collateral damage” of moving with empathy towards those has to be acknowledged, but at the same time, the movement is the heart of the Gospel.

“Muslim bans, health care repeals, ICE raids, Nazis in the street, debating the value of a black life,” he said, “I feel completely inverted spiritually. I feel profoundly disoriented as a Christian…but disorientation means your faculties are intact, your mind is right, your heart is working properly, and your soul is keeping you human in profoundly inhuman times.”

Pavlovitz suggested that the challenge for ministers and people of faith is “how to take that natural anger and channel it in to something redemptive and constructive … Can we find a transcendent Jesus? … Can we create a community where the full Jesus can be on display? I think we can. We have to embrace the activist, compassionate heart of Jesus with people who we would not otherwise be with, in places we would not think to be.”

Acknowledgements

In addition to Brenda Martin Hurst and Veva Mumaw, the planning committee included Dale Detweiler, pastor, Birch Grove Mennonite Church, Port Allegany, Pennsylvania; Peggy Packard, pastor of Weyers Cave United Methodist Church, Weyers Cave, Virginia; Dawn Ranck-Hower, pastor of New Holland Mennonite Church, of New Holland, Pennsylvania; and Danilo Sanchez, co-pastor, Ripple-Allentown, and associate pastor, Whitehall Mennonite Church, Allentown, Pennsylvania.

The worship planning team included Perry Blosser, Maren Tyedmers Hange, Matthew Hunsberger, Robert Michalides, Veva Mumaw and Ryan Scarberry.

A new book edited by ��ݮ���� professors David Evans and Peter Dula engages with author Ta-Nehisi Coates from a Christian perspective.

Between the world of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Christianity (Cascade, 2018) includes essays by theologians, ethicists and religious studies scholars responding to Coates’ Between the World and Me (Random House, 2015) on various topics, including hope, fatherhood and whiteness.

In his book, a National Book Award winner and the 2017-18 Common Read at EMU, Coates challenges readers to examine assumptions about race, history, education, faith and social change in a series of letters to his teenage son about his experiences as an African American male.

The book quickly became the topic of discussion across the nation, including a summertime conversation between Dula, department chair and professor of Bible and religion, and Evans, professor of history and mission at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. At that meeting they first discussed the possibility of creating such a volume, the duo recalls in a .

Just months later, Coates tweeted that “the best thing about between the world and me is seeing the engagement from Christians. Serious learning experience for me.” To Dula and Evans, that tweet felt like an invitation.

Although Coates writes in a spiritual way, he is an atheist and has a “reticence to engage fully in any kind of metaphysical reality,” Evans says in the video. “But it’s kind of there and wanting, and so we [Christian scholars] have something to say in the midst of that.”

Coates expresses direct criticisms of Christianity that are “not something that theologians like myself can ignore,” Dula says. For theologians to show a non-defensive eagerness to learn from Coates would be an opportunity to have “potentially really productive conversations.”

Their book, they say, is a model for engaging with Coates, which, as Evans observes, can be no easy task, in part since Coates doesn’t offer hope and comfort.

That, Dula adds, puts him in the company of Biblical prophets.

Contributors include:

• Cheryl J. Sanders, senior pastor of the Third Street Church of God in Washington, DC and professor of Christian ethics at the Howard University School of Divinity;
• Vincent Lloyd, associate professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University;
• Jennifer Harvey, professor of religion and faculty director of the Crew Scholars Program at Drake University;
• Reggie L. Williams, associate professor of Christian ethics at McCormick Theological Seminary;
• Tobin Miller Shearer, associate professor of history, director of the African-American Studies Program at the University of Montana, and a 1987 graduate of EMU; and
• Joseph Winters, assistant professor of religious studies at Duke University with a secondary appointment in African and African-American studies.

The Jan. 14-16, 2019, event will highlight the Mark 4:35-41 narrative of Jesus’ crossing the stormy sea with his disciples, and feature keynote speakers John Pavlovitz, Sue Park-Hur and David Evans, plus seminars, facilitated conversation circles and luncheon discussions.

In addition, participants are invited to join in worship and sharing, a church leaders/pastor appreciation breakfast with President Susan Schultz Huxman, and a story slam competition in which participants can volunteer to tell humorous stories from their ministry experiences.

The deadline for early registration is Friday, Nov. 30.

“Church leaders and pastors are keenly aware of the needs in their congregations,” said SLT coordinator Veva Mumaw. “Like other years, this will be a chance for them to find strength to thrive, to be inspired along with other ministers, and to become renewed in their calling to serve.”

This year, financial assistance is available through the Thriving in Ministry Lilly grant for pastors whose continuing education funding is insufficient or who as bi-vocational pastors face financial constraints.

“The seminary’s 50-year commitment to offering School for Leadership Training reflects its steadfast commitment not only to training women and men for ministry but also to supporting and nurturing pastors in the years following their seminary training,” said EMS Thriving in Ministry grant director Brenda Martin Hurst, who led the SLT planning committee from 2002-07 and is on the committee again this year. “For the next five years, this grant will support EMS in offering SLT, focusing on helping pastors to thrive and to navigate the transitions they experience in ministry.”

Keynote speakers

Pavlovitz will present three keynote addresses. A pastor for two decades, writer and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina, Pavlovitz blogs about and has published A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community (Westminster John Knox Press, 2017) and HOPE and Other Superpowers: A Life-Affirming, Love-Defending, Butt-Kicking, World-Saving Manifesto (Simon & Schuster, 2018).

Park-Hur will provide the first keynote address. The denominational minister for leadership development and transformative peacemaking for Mennonite Church USA, Park-Hur is co-director of the Los Angeles peace center specializing in conflict transformation and restorative justice for immigrant churches. She served as co-lead pastor of Mt. View Mennonite Church in Upland, California, and co-church planter of Church for Others in Temple City. In addition, she taught theological English to pastors from overseas at Fuller Theological Seminary. She is trained in Intercultural Development Inventory and sexual abuse investigations, and is a Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience practitioner.

Evans will present the fourth keynote address. An associate professor of history and intercultural studies and the director of cross-cultural programs at EMS, Evans focuses his teaching and research on the braided identity categories of race, religion, and nation. He is the co-editor of Between the World of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Christianity (Cascade, 2018), and practices a local “eco-lutionary” lifestyle that promotes an ecologically just future for the diverse people of the Shenandoah Valley watershed. He is a United Methodist.

Themes reflect change

Past themes reflect SLT’s developing and persistent engagement with issues facing church leadership, from 1971’s theme of “The Church in the 70’s” to 1982’s “Creating a Resourceful Ministry” to 1993’s “Which Way Worship?”

“Over the years the themes became more relevant and interesting as opposed to purely academic lectures,” said Linda Alley, an ordained minister and spiritual director who from 2006-16 was involved with SLT as an assistant or director and in previous years participated with her pastor husband and as a seminary student.

Increasing diversity among the attendees led also to a widening array of workshops that met various needs in church leaders: for networking within and across denominational boundaries, for meaningful continuing education, for a chance to experience worship not as leaders but as participants, Alley said.

Its name’s evolution suggests a broadening understanding of leadership in congregations: The event first took place in 1970, with the name “Ministers Week.” In 1983 the name expanded to “Minister Week: School for Leadership Training.” By the mid-90s it had transitioned to just “School for Leadership Training.”

“It truly was a refreshment to the soul for many busy leaders who needed time for self-care and renewal,” Alley said. She continues to follow the works of two past SLT lecturers in particular, Tilda Norburg () and Ruth Haley Barton (the ).

Learning and sharing in 2019

This year’s SLT includes a variety of seminars, facilitated conversation circles and luncheon discussions.

Seminars will include:

• “Building resilience and practicing self-care as pastors” with Park-Hur;
• “Embracing the Beauty of Failure” with Pavlovitz;
• “Such time as this?” with Victor Gomez, Virginia United Methodist Church Harrisonburg district superintendent;
• “Gather up the Fragments: An Ecclesioculture for Thriving Small Churches” with Bradley Roth, pastor of West Zion Mennonite Church, Moundridge, Kansas;
• “‘The Thundering Silence’: Hearing and Ministering to Combat Veterans suffering from PTSD and Moral Injury” with Darin Busé, pastor of Riverside United Methodist Church, Fulks Run, Virginia.
• “It’s always been about bodies” with EMS instructor Mary Thiessen Nation and Harrigan McMahan Bowman, an elder at Early Church in Harrisonburg; and
• “Reading the Clouds” with Maren Tyedmers-Hange, co-pastor at Charlottesville (Virginia) Mennonite Church.

Facilitated conversation circles will include:

• “The Loneliness of Leadership” led by Sue Cockley, EMU dean of graduate and seminary;
• “Pastoring in Polarizing Times” led by Todd Friesen, pastor of East Chestnut Street Mennonite Church, Lancaster, Pennsylvania;
• “Help, I’m a solo pastor! Things I didn’t know I would have to do” led by EMS Professor Lonnie Yoder; and
• “Bats in the belfry” led by Jeff Mumaw, a former mental health worker.

Luncheon discussion options will be “Ministry in Anabaptist Churches” for students, leaders and conference ministers to network, and a “Women in Ministry Gathering” led by Hurst.

She is pastor of youth and children’s ministries at Shalom Mennonite Congregation in Harrisonburg. She and partner Justin Shenk, both 2006 graduates of EMU, were community hosts in a United Reformed Church through Mennonite Mission Network in London, England, for three years. Valerie‘s work in London and following has focused on community organizing and faith formation through facilitating theology roundtable discussions, craftivism (craft + activism), and countless cups of tea.

***

Two years ago, my partner and I were anticipating the end of an international service assignment with Mennonite Mission Network. We were returning to the U.S. with no set plans, no jobs, and having spent three years not really earning money.

As we were packing and discerning next steps, I decided to try my hand and my brain at a course, offered online by Eastern Mennonite Seminary. That course was “New Testament: Text in Context” with .

Maybe enrolling in that class was a strategy for distraction as we left behind the community we had known, or the nervous anticipation of reverse culture shock, but my eager engagement in that class set me on a trajectory that made evident that seminary was where I was being called.

And that’s where you enter my story.

I was fortunate to be offered one of the Ministry Leadership Awards, an award that covers half of my tuition. I am personally grateful for the investment made in me, and it’s the same generosity that inevitably is investing in the future of the church. Which may lead you to ask, “Well, what does the church’s future hold? What are we investing in when we give to EMU or EMS?

From where I am as a student in the seminary, this is what I envision: The future church is a beacon of the kind of hope that transforms, a hope that invites our participation in the in-breaking of God’s kin-dom on earth.

Through the lens of David Evans’ course on churches and social transformation, I envision a church that strives to dismantle racism and white supremacy, because the church has deconstructed its own complicity in structural violence and acted to change. It is a church of deep equity and broad diversity.

Through the lens of Dorothy Jean Weaver and Kevin Clark’s course “Women and Men in Scripture and Church,” I envision a church that is free from the oppressive structures of sexism and patriarchy, a church that proclaims that all, regardless of gender identity, are beloved children of God, called by God to full participation in the body of Christ.

Because of the team-taught courses that focus on the holistic formation of each seminary student, I envision a church with well-equipped and wise leaders, drawing the church into a deeper faith that kindles our passion for justice and inspires unreserved acts of mercy.

This vision of the future church – surely augmented by many other facets of discipleship and study – does not come without cost. There are many ways to pay this cost, but tonight, I thank you for your financial contributions. My hope and my prayer is that – here, in the community united by Eastern Mennonite – we each find a way to share our gifts with one another, equally beloved participants in the kin-dom of God.

To learn more about EMS, contact Les Horning, director of seminary admissions.

As an Anabaptist seminary,��EMS��has special emphasis in peacebuilding, biblical studies, spiritual formation and theology, training leaders for��, and��, as well as other denominations.

Each year since 2013, faculty, staff, and students select a book that relates to contemporary situations and which will generate conversation around important themes. Most of the finalists for this year “connected to themes of race and justice, an indicator of what’s in the general zeitgeist in our country and on our minds at EMU,” said professor and Intellectual Life Committee member .

In the series of letters to his teenage son about his life experiences as an African American male, Coates challenges readers to examine assumptions about race, history, education, faith and social change.

Common Read activities at EMU throughout the year will include conversations about race, diversity and identity, including Anabaptist identity.

Five Thursday noon reading circles, beginning Sept. 14 in the East Dining Room and facilitated by Professor , will jump-start the discussion. Each hour-long conversation will focus on consecutive sections of the book. A second round of reading circles will run for five weeks starting Wednesday, Nov. 1 from 5-6 p.m. in Northlawn Great Lounge.

Social justice activist and civil rights attorney Fania Davis will contribute to those discussions in April when she spends a week on campus as a , sponsored by the .

Toni Morrison calls Between the World and Me “required reading,” and wrote, “I’ve been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates. The language of Between the World and Me, like Coates’s journey, is visceral, eloquent, and beautifully redemptive. And its examination of the hazards and hopes of black male life is as profound as it is revelatory.”

The book was chosen long before the that threatened the nation’s sense of inclusiveness and angered many in EMU’s social justice-oriented community. But Beachy thinks that there is plenty in the book to challenge even this sympathetic, academic culture, from conceptions of whiteness that Coates says is at the heart of racism, to his response to the reverence for non violence in civil rights action in a world “secured and ruled by savage means.”

Coates also rejects the “magic” of religious faith: “The spirit and soul are the body and brain, which are destructible — that is precisely why they are so precious,” he writes. However, in their introduction to the collection of original essays Between the World of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Christianity (Wipf & Stock: forthcoming), professors and note a Tweet by Coates in which he said, “Best thing about #BetweenTheWorldAndMe is watching Christians engage the work. Serious learning experience for me.” Their book, they say, “can be read as a response” to Coates’ insights.

“The value of Between the World and Me for all of us in this campus community is that it invites us to see through the eyes of another person as he honestly relates to his son his own, specific experience of what it means to live in a black body in America,” said Beachy.

The final blessing, offered by Undergraduate Campus Pastor , included a prayer for each attendee, the students from all faiths and backgrounds who would begin arriving on campus that day, and — in acknowledgement of — for courage to confront “systems of racism that destroy rather than build the Kingdom of God.”

This year’s theme��—��“Expanding the Legacy, Enlarging the Tent” — emphasized integrating EMU’s history and traditions with a vision for its second century; the conference also officially launched EMU’s celebrations.

Strong vision

President donned three different types of eyewear during her keynote address to illustrate the “special kind of seeing we do in Anabaptist Mennonite schools … more clearly, deeply and widely.” [Listen to the .]

EMU is well-poised with “strong vision and high purpose” for the future, she said.

Merging perspectives of hindsight and foresight with Anabaptist-inspired insight, she noted EMU’s strong and vibrant historic legacy; a robust, holistic and distinctive education that includes cross-cultural study and faith formation; and a cohesive, faith-filled community of faculty and staff.

“We have just begun to promote a vibrant future of counter-cultural Mennonite education, one that prepares our students for relevant and in-demand careers and meaningful spiritual lives shaped by the reconciling love of Jesus,” Huxman said.

While praising EMU’s entrepreneurial spirit, epitomized in pioneering professor emeritus and philanthropist Margaret “Speedy” Martin Gehman and Alumnus of the Year , Huxman noted new academic offerings: the program, offered collaboratively with Goshen (Indiana) College, as well as the new four-year and a neuroscience minor.

Approximately 380 new and returning employees participated. The fall semester begins Monday, Aug. 28.

��Many voices

A panel of respondents to Huxman’s speech included , , and . The final session of storytelling, a much-loved tradition, included , , , and .

Special guest Donald B. Kraybill provided a one-hour preview of his forthcoming Centennial history, ��ݮ����: One Hundred Years of Counter-Cultural Education (Penn State Press, 2017) to be released at the Oct. 13-15 .

Four breakout sessions highlighted influential programs, themes and concepts:

• — Professors and traced the history of racial-ethnic diversity at EMU, with special attention to current diversity trends and shifting paradigms. They asked, “How could and should paradigms and power structures shift? How can and should our new diversity help us more fully understand and realize the radical nature of our Anabaptist values?” Click here to .

• Drinking in Knowledge at the Source: EMU’s Cross Cultural Program — A panel of five experienced cross-cultural program leaders discussed one of EMU’s most unique academic programs and included , professor and interim cross-cultural program director; , program assistant; , emeritus professor; , cross-cultural leader and adjunct instructor; and professors and .
• Creating a Beloved Community at EMU: Organizational Culture as Blessing and Barrier — Professor discussed culture and sub-culture identities as both assets and liabilities. He invited the group to list both blessings and barriers to EMU’s culture (and multiple sub cultures), noting that you must first understand your own organizational culture before you can��interpret for��—��and thus fully integrate��—��newcomers.
• “Thy Word is Truth”: Old Song, New Tune — Professor , associate dean of Eastern Mennonite Seminary, and Professor discussed “word” and “truth” as the biblical writer imagined these words, and engaged with ways that the motto speaks to��EMU at 100 years.