Bahnson is the author of the forthcoming Soil & Sacrament: Food, Faith, and Growing Heaven on Earth (Simon & Schuster, Aug. 2013) and co-author of Making Peace with the Land (InterVarsity Press, 2012). He holds a masters in theological studies from Duke Divinity School. After being drawn to the agrarian life while serving as a peaceworker among Mayan coffee farmers in Chiapas, Mexico, he returned to the U.S. and in 2005 co-founded Anathoth Community Garden, a church-supported agriculture ministry in Cedar Grove, NC which he then directed until 2009. He joined the faculty of the School of Divinity in 2012. For more information about the Food, Faith, and Religious Leadership Initiative, please visit the Initiative’s homepage at www.divinity.wfu.edu/food-and-faith. 

You can hear from Bahnson now by watching his recent TEDxManhattan talk on “Changing the Way We Eat.”

Media Contact: Mark Batten

After serving as the Henry Luce Diversity Fellow in Theological Education at the School of Divinity for the past two years, Derek S. Hicks has been appointed as Assistant Professor of Religion and Culture. His research considers the impact of religion on those engaged in social, cultural, and political struggle. Particularly, he is interested in issues related to religion and race in America, identity formation, religion’s role in social transformation, slave religion, religion and foodways, the body, and the intersection of religion and Hip-Hop culture. His first book, Reclaiming Spirit in the Black Faith Tradition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) identifies religious practices that engage culture – in relation to bodily, political, spiritual, and social restoration – to recalibrate wounded human dignity. Hicks earned his Ph.D. from Rice University and has received awards from the Ford Foundation, the Fund for Theological Education, and the Louisville Institute.  Prior to coming to Wake Forest, he was on the faculty at Lancaster Theological Seminary. 

Katherine A. Shaner joins the faculty as Assistant Professor of New Testament and comes to Wake Forest from The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York City.  Her research interests include constructions of race, class, and gender in the New Testament, household religions in the Ancient Mediterranean, and feminist/womanist hermeneutics. She is currently working on a book about slavery in early Christianity using archaeological, literary, and epigraphic materials located in and around the city of Ephesos, where she spent a summer working as an excavation assistant with the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Selcuk, Turkey. Shaner received her Th.D. from Harvard Divinity School and is ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), by whom she was appointed to serve on the Contextual Theologies from the Margins study group of the Faith and Order Commission of the National Council of Churches in Christ.

Media Contact: Mark Batten

In a few weeks, you will commence. We often think of commencement as the end of something, and our school’s formal commencement activities do mark the conclusion of your Master of Divinity degree program. The truth, however, is that to commence really means to begin. Even now as we count down the final days of the spring 2013 semester, your feet are poised for next steps. For now, at least until graduation day on May 20, most of you have not yet entirely stirred the dust on roads that lead away from Wake Forest School of Divinity. In the days ahead—finishing classes, completing exams, waiting for graduation events—in the days ahead, we pause, in a sense, as we anticipate what graduation’s ending really commences.  During the pre-commencement pause each year, I usually consider several hopes I hold for graduates. 

I hope you have more knowledge now than when you took that first church history or theology or ethics midterm.

I hope you are more aware of the intricacies and complexities of biblical truths.

I also hope you are more likely now, at the end of 81 credit hours, to celebrate those moments when compassion and intelligence, theological acuity and moral responsibility, fuse within you so that your very bodies annunciate God’s grace.

I hope you are clearer about your core values and your limits. We cannot attend fully to everyone we meet. Wisdom and grace reside in our capacity to choose.

I hope you have gained both—wisdom and grace. 

And I hope you know that wisdom and grace dwell in life’s pauses even as they resound in ministry’s mighty acts.

With these hopes and more in mind, I say farewell to you, Class of 2013.  I have enjoyed spending time with you in conversations, classrooms, chapel gatherings and coffee hours. I wish each of you the best as you begin the next steps of your vocational journeys.  Wherever you find yourself in the next three to six months—congregational ministry, chaplaincy, counseling, teaching, not-for-profit work, additional graduate study, or in contexts yet to be discovered—I hope that you remain confident in and excited about how God will live and work in your lives. Your commitments to and passions for ministry and the leadership skills and gifts that continue to grow within you give me hope for the future of Gospel work and communities. 

Dates to Remember

Course Evaluations

Course evaluations are an important aspect of curriculum review and planning for future semesters. Students are encouraged to complete course evaluations for each of their courses. Evaluations can be completed through student WIN accounts. 

>> View the full edition of This Week online.

Blessings on the week ahead,

•  Online Hebrew (Session I and II; 3 credit hours each) – an intensive summer course, online Hebrew is equivalent to a full academic year (two semesters, six credit hours) of study and is intended to provide students with the basic fundamentals necessary to engage the text of the Hebrew Bible in the original language for the purposes of study, research, and ministry.
• Christian Encounter with Hinduism (Session II, Weekdays 1:40 – 2:55pm; 3 credit hours) – Many Christians are simultaneously bewildered by Hinduism and appreciative of it – bewildered by a tradition that seems to affirm thousands of divinities, and appreciative of its enduring legacies of wisdom, meditation, and religious tolerance. The class has two main goals: (1) help students gain literacy in the history and thought systems of this diverse tradition; (2) engage and encounter Hindu texts and practices in a way that helps students return to their personal theological traditions to asses their new categories and questions.
• The Spirituality of Food, Field, and Table (June 16-20 only; 1 credit hour) – This course will take place on the campus of Warren Wilson College in the mountains of Western North Carolina and will feature experiential learning as well as lectures and discussions that explore theological and scriptural dimensions of the practices of field and table. This course will be offered on a pass/fail basis and in addition to tuition requires an additional registration fee for housing and meals. Registration is limited.

To enroll in summer courses, those interested will need to complete an abbreviated application for admission and meet the listed admission requirements. Applications will need to be submitted no later than May 24, 2013. Completed applications can be emailed electronically to the School of Divinity Office of Admissions at divinity@wfu.edu.

A reduced tuition rate is available for summer courses at $350 per credit hour. For more information on summer school at the School of Divinity, visit www.divinity.wfu.edu/summer13 or contact the Office of Admissions at 336.758.3748 or divinity@wfu.edu.
 

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About the Wake Forest University School of Divinity: The School of Divinity is a graduate, professional school that is Christian by tradition, Baptist in heritage, and ecumenical in outlook. Consistent with Wake Forest’s commitment to academic excellence and in the spirit of the University, Pro Humanitate, the School of Divinity prepares leaders informed by a theological understanding of vocation. Through imaginative courses and diverse programs of community engagement, students are equipped to be agents of justice, reconciliation, and compassion in Christian churches and other ministries.

Media Contact: Mark Batten

The grant will fund a year-long project through which the School of Divinity will offer a series of worship practicum courses to provide students with hands-on experiences in worship leadership. The project will give ministry students opportunities to practice and reflect theologically about how worship leaders “do,” or embody, theology in worship. It will also invite students to explore relationships between public leadership, worship leadership styles, and varied worship traditions. The grant is one of 28 grants totaling more than $300,000 awarded for 2013 by the CICW to churches, schools and seminaries across North America. 

“These projects have much to teach us,” said CICW director John Witvliet, “and we are eager to learn from them. But we know too that worship renewal is not something that human ingenuity or creativity alone can produce or engineer. It is a gift of God’s Spirit, a gift for which we pray, rather than an accomplishment we achieve. So, even as we announce these grants, and as we look forward to the work these recipients will do in the coming year, we also pray.”

“We have outstanding worship leaders in Winston-Salem and the surrounding area,” said the School of Divinity’s professor of worship, Jill Crainshaw. “Through this project, students will have a chance to learn from local leaders who serve in congregations or who teach and lead sacred music courses and choirs at several local colleges and universities.” Courses offered through the grant will include topics such as The Art of Praying in Public, Worship and Music for Pastoral Leaders, Public Reading of Scripture, Worshipping with Children and Youth, and Hymnody as Ministerial Art.

The CICW’s Worship Renewal Grants program is now in its 14th year and has seen more than 600 projects funded since its inception.

“This year,” said Betty Grit, manager of the Worship Renewal Grants program, “the CICW received proposals from 16 denominations, 24 states and four Canadian provinces.”

An advisory board of pastors and teachers from a variety of backgrounds assisted in the grant selection and the 28 proposals being funded represent congregations and schools from 11 denominations in 15 states and twoCanadian provinces. 

For the 2013 grant recipients, learning will begin in earnest this June when project directors for all 28 grants gather on Calvin’s campus to dialogue not only with CICW staff, but also with the recipients of 2012 grants, who will come to campus to share the results of their year-long project.

“The getting-together of both old and new grant recipients is intentional,” said Grit, “and fruitful.”

“It is an opportunity,” she said, “for learning and conversation that encourages and provides resources for worship renewal. It is a wonderful time together for the grant recipients.”

The Worship Renewal Grants Program is generously supported by Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment Inc. Founded in 1937, the Endowment’s major areas of concern are community development, education, and religion.

For more information on the grants program, including a complete list of this year’s grants recipients, please see: www.calvin.edu/worship.

Media Contact: Mark Batten

I invite us this week to look back over the academic year and begin even now, as exams and commencement draw nigh, to celebrate projects well done, tasks completed, and goals met. I invite us, too, to take a moment to remember the stories and faces connected to the tasks and events recorded in our calendars. Calendars can spark for us gratitude for the people with whom we’ve journeyed through delightful or dreary days, for prayers answered, or for unexpected interruptions to our planned activities that brought to us graced moments, moments that perhaps are not recorded on a calendar but that nevertheless shaped and shape who we are.

Also, while we are on the subject of calendars, let me remind all of us of a few upcoming academic dates to remember:

Course Evaluations

Course evaluations are an important aspect of curriculum review and planning for future semesters. Students are encouraged to complete course evaluations for each of their courses. Evaluations can be completed through student WIN accounts. 

>> View the full edition of This Week online.

Blessings on the week ahead,

Over 50 theology students arrived on the campus of Wake Forest University School of Divinity on March 22, 2013 to participate in the inaugural gathering of Community Engagement Fellows. These Fellows – graduate students from ten seminaries and divinity schools – have expressed a deep commitment to the work of social justice in their schools and communities. They gathered for a weekend conference to share their experiences of community engagement, to engage more deeply in social issues, and to reflect on how to ignite a larger movement of social justice among seminarians.

The conference began with an invitation from Gail R. O’Day, Dean of the School of Divinity, for students to consider how their theological education uniquely prepares them to work for justice rooted in a faith tradition that is marked by radical hospitality. Students from each of the schools shared presentations in the style of TED Talks about their work of engaging the community in their contexts: starting a community garden, providing health resources for sex workers, engaging conversations about race and class, and more.

On Saturday, Chris Hoke, a pastor to gangs and prisoners in the Pacific Northwest, spoke of the need to do justice by engaging people one on one and building relationships across traditional boundaries. Wayne Meisel, the visionary and founder of the Community Engagement Fellows program, led the participants to develop concrete strategies and plans to launch a movement of seminary students to build on this work of justice and community engagement.

Throughout the weekend, students gathered for prayer and worship to ground their work in the spiritual tradition and practices of their Christian faith. Seeking to embody their commitments to care for the earth and food justice, participants cooked meals together from foods that were locally sourced and organically grown.

The Conference was created and hosted by the Fellows from Wake Forest – Molly Bolton, Chris Coates, Jessica Place, Chris Rinker, and Jamie Sims – and the director of the program, Christopher T. Copeland.

The Community Engagement Fellows Program is funded by Leadership Renewal Ministries and includes graduate students from Wake Forest, Vanderbilt, Princeton, Emory, Columbia Seminary, McAfee School of Theology, University of Chicago, Luther Seminary, Wesley Seminary, and Johnson C. Smith Seminary.

Media Contact: Mark Batten  |  Picture Source: Asher Kolieboi

The Wake Forest University School of Divinity offers an integrative, multi-disciplinary approach to theological education. One of our curricular aims is to equip women and men to be public religious leaders. Several newly developed concentrations within the Master of Divinity degree emphasize skills and knowledge specific to particular fields of study and areas of religious leadership. While concentrations are not required, students can choose a concentration that allows them to explore in greater depth areas of particular interest. Each concentration includes several required foundational courses along with related internship and capstone requirements. The curriculum for each concentration attends to the distinctive perspectives that faith communities can contribute to public conversations regarding each of the concentration area. Courses are also designed to equip students to be effective advocates for change.

Beginning with the Fall Term 2013, students can concentrate in one of three areas:

• Food and Faith
• Faith and the Health of the Public
• Education

The first two concentration areas are part of the school’s new Well-Being and Religious Leadership Program. Additional information about this program and the related concentrations can be found here. The Education Concentration is being offered through a partnership with the University’s Department of Education and enables students who already hold a teaching certification to qualify for a North Carolina master’s level certification. Additional information about the Education Concentration can be found here.

The School encourages interested students to declare a concentration by the end of their second full semester of study by submitting a proposal to the Office of the Academic Dean. Proposal guidelines are available through the Office of the Academic Dean.

News

Project Chapel

On Friday, Project Chapel will host Voices in the Whirlwind, a Worship Experience and Open Mic Night. Join us at 7:00pm in the Lower Auditorium. 

>> View the full edition of This Week online.

Blessings on the week ahead,

Summer planning is underway for many School of Divinity students. This year’s summer session at the School of Divinity offers a variety of opportunities for students to earn credits toward their degrees as they explore interesting course topics over the summer months. The 2013 summer session unfolds over two five and one-half week terms. Session 1 officially begins May 29 and concludes on July 3. Session 2 begins on July 8 and concludes on August 10.

What are some advantages to enrolling in summer school courses?

• A lighter course load in summer sessions can enhance learning by allowing more time for intensive study of course material.
• A reduced tuition rate ($350 per credit hour) makes summer courses more affordable.
• By completing summer courses, students have an opportunity to reduce their academic year course loads, thus leaving space for expanded internships, employment or other projects.
• Some summer course offerings are uniquely suited to the summer session and thus are only offered at that time.

Summer School courses are open to degree-seeking School of Divinity students, students who are beginning the Master of Divinity program in the fall of 2013, students enrolled in other institutions who are seeking transfer credit options, and non-degree-seeking students. Those who are not enrolled in the School of Divinity should contact the Admissions Office for information on how to be admitted to the summer session.

This summer, the School of Divinity is offering a diverse selection of courses:

Note: Current School of Divinity students can register for summer courses (with the exception of “The Spirituality of Food” course) through WIN.

>> View the full edition of This Week online.

Blessings on the week ahead,

Reflections for Easter Monday

“God will fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy.” Job 8:21

I am intrigued and amused by the varied traditions and customs that converge on this particular Easter Monday, April 1, 2013.

This week is known in some Christian traditions as “Bright Week” as faith communities around the world continue to celebrate the new light that dawned with Jesus’ resurrection. In this tradition, each day of the week following Easter Sunday carries the adjective “bright.” Easter Monday holds the additional distinction of being referred to by some as Risus Paschalis—Easter Laugh. Early orthodox communities began a tradition of gathering on the Monday following Resurrection Sunday to tell jokes as a way of marking Easter as God’s ultimate joke played on Satan by defeating death with life. Some observe the Easter Laugh by including jokes or humorous anecdotes in their Easter Sunday sermons. Others emphasize laughter on the second Sunday of Easter, sometimes called Holy Humor or Hilarity Sunday. This year’s Risus Paschalis (if observed on Easter Monday) is particularly interesting as it falls on April 1, or April Fools Day, a day when people play practical jokes on each other.

Since the official opening day for major league baseball is also on April 1 (following opening night on March 31), it seems important to note a historic Demon Deacon Easter Monday tradition. For many years, North Carolina observed Easter Monday instead of Good Friday as a state holiday. Some attribute the reason to a long-standing Easter Monday baseball game between Wake Forest College and State College (North Carolina State). Thomas Hearn, president of Wake Forest from 1983 until 2005, writes about the famous rivalry in a history of the school entitled Wake Forest University (Arcadia Publishing, 2003):

Beginning in the 1890s, Wake Forest and N.C. State played the annual Easter baseball
classic in Raleigh on Easter Monday. It is believed that the North Carolina legislature
made Easter Monday a designated holiday for North Carolina to ensure that people would be able to watch the game.

North Carolina observed Easter Monday as a state holiday from 1935 until 1987.

Bright Monday, Risus Paschalis, April Fools Day, Baseball’s Opening Day, historic Easter Monday rivalries, Fall 2013 registration—all of these converge on this particular April 1, 2013. Coincidence? Perhaps. Nevertheless, the possibilities for a day of joyful remembrances and hopeful anticipation remain as we recall and celebrate yet again Gospel resurrection promises. Life has defeated and will continue to defeat death. The promise is cosmic but infuses even the most mundane dimensions of human life. This seems particularly important for those in pursuit of a Master of Divinity degree and especially for those who sign up this week for another semester of tests, research papers, and long days and nights of study. How often have people said to ministry students when they announce their decisions to undertake a divinity degree something like “are you sure you’ve thought this through?” or “are you joking?” When uncertainties arise as any of us pursue God’s call, or when everyday trials make us want to give up, or when the going gets tough and we are tempted to think the joke is on us, we can remember again the contagious, life-giving gift of the Easter laugh. Perhaps on this Monday, April 1, 2013, we can join Sarah who all those years ago announced:  “God has made me laugh. Everyone who hears will laugh with me” (Genesis 21:6). 

>> View the full edition of This Week online.

Blessings on the week ahead,