Crossings | Fall 2016

FALL 2016

All-Star Cast High wattage in low-residency program

Ethics and the Climate Crisis Exploring who is responsible, who gets hurt

Speaking Faith in Public Former presiding bishop shows the way

Letter from the Dean

On the cover: Bishops Marc Andrus and Katharine Jefferts Schori sprinkle one another with holy water in the process of blessing CDSP’s new solar panel installation.

Photo by Thomas Minczeski

If you’ve ever given a sermon, you’ve probably asked yourself whether you embody in your own life the values you espouse from the pulpit. This is a challenge for institutions as well as for individuals. It came as a happy surprise to me, then, to review this issue of Crossings, which was not intentionally planned around a particular theme, and find that it captures CDSP in the act of walking its talk.

In explaining the goals of our newly revised curriculum, the faculty and I have stressed the importance of preparing students who can speak the truth of the gospel not only within church walls, but in the public square as well. We’ve emphasized the importance of training leaders who can inspire people to take Christ-centered action on complex moral issues in an increasingly pluralistic world.

We’ve spoken about the importance of bringing the distinctive gifts of the Christian spiritual and intellectual tradition to bear on the pressing questions that confront our world today. In this issue of Crossings, you will get a sense of how we are going about that.

Our lead story will introduce you to the impressive cadre of students who have enrolled in our low-residency program. The program is not simply flourishing in terms of enrollment; it is attracting students who already have earned advanced degrees or made significant achievements in other professions. The June residential session included a doctor, a lawyer, a psychologist, a stock broker, a retired business executive and two college faculty members. We’ve even got an actor in the bunch. I am delighted that we are attracting such accomplished students. They, like all of our students, bring particular experiences into our classrooms, enhancing our collective wisdom and enriching our moral discernment by sharing their perspectives and expertise.

We have been honored this semester to have the Rt. Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church and CDSP alumna (MDiv ’94, DD ‘01), on campus as the St. Margaret’s Visiting Professor of Women in Ministry. In her course, “The Public Square: Engaging Emerging Opportunities,” she and her students are exploring

how pastoral leaders can help to foster what she describes as “constructive and elevated public dialogue that is at once civil and earnest, evangelical and thoughtfully critical, and energetically focused on a vision of the beloved community.” Having probing conversations about public discourse against the backdrop of a contentious presidential campaign is a learning experience not easily duplicated.

The visual centerpiece of this issue is the wonderful conference on “This Fragile Earth: The Church Responds to Climate Change,” which was held at CDSP on October 22. Our day concluded with Bishop Jefferts Schori and Bishop Marc Andrus of California blessing the solar panel atop Parsons Hall. We also have solar panels on Shires and Easton Halls, and taken together they constitute the largest solar energy installation at any seminary in the country.

As I’ve said before, at CDSP we believe that moral accountability in our relationship to the environment is an essential component of quality theological education. Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, professor of theological and social ethics at CDSP, made that point with passion and precision in her address at the conference. She also offered her insights about climate change and “climate debt” in an interview that starts on page 8. “Climate change is caused largely by the world’s highconsuming people, but is suffered most by people who have not caused it,” she said. “So what do we owe to the people who are going to suffer, be displaced, or die as a result of climate change?” Through our solar panel initiative, CDSP has made significant progress in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but I don’t yet have an answer for Professor Moe-Lobeda.

Contemplating these questions and actions related to climate change and learning the skills of public conversation is challenging work, and we have much to learn to do these things well in our ministries. I am proud and grateful, though, that CDSP is a seminary where such questions are being explored in the light of our faith.

— T he V ery R ev . W. M ark R ichardson , P h D President and Dean

Photo by Thomas Minczeski

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The Gifts They Bring

This Fragile Earth

A talented and accomplished corps of students enlivens the low-residency program

Conference concludes with blessing of solar panels

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Faculty and Student News

Climate Change, Climate Debt

CDSP community stands out in scholarship and at conferences.

Professor Cynthia Moe-Lobeda explores the ethical complexities of the climate crisis

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Active Alums

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Where Church Meets Culture

Crossings FALL 2016

Former Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori (center) readies students for ministry in the public square

Three alums honored at October convocation

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Keeping Pace Reflecting on well-made changes at CDSP

The Very Rev. W. Mark Richardson, Dean and President Editorial: Canticle Communications Photography: Thomas Minczeski Design: Barbara Nishi Graphic Design Crossings is published by Church Divinity School of the Pacific 2451 Ridge Road, Berkeley, CA 94709-1211 Š Church Divinity School of the Pacific, all rights reserved.

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Professions of

Faith by

Jim Naughton

A doctor and a lawyer walk into a seminary…

Anthony Jones always knew he had a calling, even when what the caller was saying was not entirely clear.

Photo by Thomas Minczeski

“It was something I wrestled with for a long time, the idea of a call to ministry, but I didn’t know what it was,” says Jones, who was recently ordained a deacon in the Diocese of Long Island. After graduating from law school in 1995, he spent five years practicing family, probate and mental health law.

“In some ways I realized I was meeting people day in and day out at some of life’s most challenging moments,” he says. “And that wasn’t fulfilling because I could meet their legal needs, but I couldn’t meet the deeper needs that I saw there because I was doing it in the name of a law firm and not in the name of Jesus Christ.”

As his career ping-ponged him between New York City and Dallas, he continued to contemplate a future in the priesthood. “I couldn’t quit,” he says. “I had invested a lot, and I was still paying for law school,” says Jones, who now works as a staff attorney for the Department of Veterans Affairs in New York City. So when I heard about the lowresidency program at CDSP, it was really an answer to prayer.”

In CDSP’s low-residency program, students can earn a Master of Divinity or a Certificate in Anglican Studies by attending two intensive residency sessions on the seminary’s campus in Berkeley each year, and then completing other course work online.

When CDSP launched the program in 2014, Dean W. Mark Richardson felt certain that the program filled an essential need in the church. “We knew there were students out there who couldn’t pursue their vocations

due to family commitments, professional obligations or simple economics,” he says. “What we didn’t know was that the program would attract so many highly accomplished applicants, many of whom had already earned advanced degrees or made their marks in demanding professions.”

Low-residency programs are finding their place in theological education because they strike many as the best way to make the advantages of a traditional three-year residential seminary experience available to people who cannot attend such programs full-time.

The low-residency option combines the academic rigor of a residential program with the flexibility of “local formation” programs in which candidates for ordination prepare for the priesthood primarily by working in their parish or diocese. Low-residency study also

“What we didn’t know was that the program would attract so many highly accomplished applicants, many of whom had already earned advanced degrees or made their marks in demanding professions.”

— T he V ery R ev . W. M ark R ichardson , P h D

introduces students to faculty and peers from across the church while allowing them to remain rooted in their communities.

In addition, students in low-residency programs, who are balancing training for the priesthood with their existing careers, may be models for the bi-vocational future of the

Church Divinity School of the Pacific • Fall 2016 C R O S S I N G S

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“…the low-residency

“…I realized I wanted to

“I am struck by the

program at CDSP…was really

be functioning in some

importance of worship, the

an answer to prayer.”

sacramental way…”

importance of practice,”

— Anthony Jones

— L au r a B e n to n

­— J u d i t h L y o n s

Episcopal priesthood. Even today, fewer and fewer parishes are able to pay clergy a full-time wage, and in 2015, only 55 percent of active priests in the domestic church were employed full-time by just one congregation.

Perhaps most important, however, is that low-residency students bring fresh and distinctive perspectives to the classroom, just as they will to the practice of ministry. Laura Benton, a low-residency MDiv student from North Carolina, remembers a conversation during her Foundations of Ministry class. “We had a hospital chaplain, and an actor, and a teacher and guy who works with at-risk youth, and a doctor weighing in. I thought it was very valuable to have all of that experience in one room.”

CDSP has long attracted people who had had significant careers before entering the seminary. The current residential student body includes Brandon Barnicle, a stockbroker who is regularly interviewed on CNBC, and Ed Milkovich, who has produced scores of television dramas.

Photo by Thomas Minczeski

Recent graduates include Margaret Cohea, who had been a CIA analyst, and Gail Bernthal, a licensed audiologist. What the low-residency program has done is open the door to a greater number of people bringing significant experience in secular fields to bear on their seminary educations.

It may sound like a joke in search of a punch line: So a doctor, a lawyer

Low-residency study also introduces students to faculty and peers from across the church while still allowing them to remain rooted in their communities.

and a therapist walk into a room— but during the intensive residency session held in June, it was actually just a description of lunchtime on campus.

C R O S S I N G S Fall 2016 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

A bi-vocational call The chemistry departments of large, public universities are not traditional hotbeds of Christian vocation. “In graduate school in the hard sciences, while there are people of faith, it is kind of on the down-low,” Benton says. “I wasn’t proselytizing, but I wore a cross, and I spoke about my experience going to South Africa, and people said things to me that would have been classified as inappropriate in a pejorative way. But having that experience was the most formative and rich time in my spiritual journey.”

She had earned a master’s degree and was studying for her Ph.D. when she realized that while teaching excited her, research did not. A career crisis was averted by two serendipitous developments: She was offered the youth ministry job at Chapel of the Cross, an Episcopal church in Chapel Hill, and the university liked her teaching enough to hire her as an instructor. Then the full-scale exploration of her vocation began.

She felt drawn to chaplaincy, perhaps on a college campus where she knew the need was great (“You hear some amazing things during office hours,” she says), or in a hospital, or in a prison. She and two students from Duke Divinity School had led a project at the Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina, that involved developing and sharing spiritual autobiographies.

“The more I explored it, the more I realized I wanted to be functioning in some sacramental way, gathering us all around the altar, calling us back to love and hope and those things we lose sight of when we are in a tense time—which graduate school is,” Benton says.

Diocesan leaders suggested a two-year, no-degree program at another Episcopal seminary, but Benton was drawn to CDSP. “I really appreciated that this program existed, that the church was starting to recognize that people who are bi-vocational have a ministry that is just as rich and necessary in moving God’s kingdom forward as anyone else’s.

“I also wanted a place where I would fit into the program if I decided to go full time for a year,” she adds. “I decided I wanted to go to a place that had enough foresight to know that this was really going to be important for the church of the future and that had the willingness to support those students.”

My parish was key Like Benton, many students find their way into the low-residency program after developing a significant ministry in their local parish.

Judith Lyons of the Diocese of Los Angeles was developing a ministry that explores spirituality through the arts at St. Augustine-by-the Sea, where she once served as senior warden, when people began to suggest to her that she should become a priest.

“The relationship I have with my parish is key to my formation,” says Lyons, who also works as an on-call chaplain at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica. “It was from my parish that I got the encouragement and with them that I discerned I had this vocation. I feel now that they take pleasure in my progress. But I also feel that it is the center of my prayer life.

It is the center of my service life. The parish life for me is the center of everything.”

Lyons had spent her career in the theater, acting, directing and teaching acting on the

high school and college level. “The theater for me was a sacred space for 45 years, and in that sacred space I felt very much the privilege and the drive to dig deeply into human experience and to be truthful about that, even in a farce or white wigs,” Lyons says. “Getting at the truth, getting actors to open up to that place in themselves, is very important work.

Accompanying people in difficult times when they were feeling vulnerable was something in which Lyons was experienced.

“I really appreciated that this program existed, that the church was starting to recognize that people who are bi-vocational have a ministry that is just as rich and necessary in moving God’s kingdom forward as anyone else’s.”

— Laura Benton

Still, she wondered what the experience of the low-residency program would be like.

How would they feel being thrown together for two periods each year with people they didn’t know, and might not see outside of the program? Would the faculty take lowresidency students as seriously as the students they saw regularly during the academic year?

“I just fell in love with every minute,” she says. “I wanted to be challenged academically and I certainly am. I have the time to reread and rewrite and really spend a lot of time with this material, and I am grateful. The intensive in June was thrilling, being surrounded by such exciting people.”

Once low-residency students arrive on campus, the rhythms of seminary take hold.

“I am struck by the importance of worship, the importance of practice,” Lyons says. “We were put into teams for worship… and of course it was our first time and we were all giddy and nervous. … That was a very good forming thing where you suddenly had to perform for the whole place.

“The academics would be rigorous but the context of community and worship would be foundational, and I really liked that balance a lot. It also seemed there was really easy access to the faculty, and I found that to be true the moment that I got there.”

Church Divinity School of the Pacific • Fall 2016 C R O S S I N G S

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“It was phenomenal. … You’ve got professors, professionals and physicians who can’t just take three years out of their lives

Benton had a similar experience. “I think the faculty are to be commended,” she says.

“The culture they create in the classroom is one in which we were all adults who came together to collaborate on this material.”

She was particularly struck by the dynamics in her first-year Hebrew class with Professor Julian González. “There was a huge volume of work, so the culture could very well have been hard-core and hard-driving, but he was so open and generous, and one of my classmates who had a wicked sense of humor would be cracking these jokes and telling these stories and we’d be laughing and then we’d do some Hebrew. There was such camaraderie … I’d have taken Hebrew twice in one day.”

and they are still committed to doing this.”

— J i ll W a lt e r s

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Safe, but challenging The Rev. Jill Walters, a newly-ordained priest in the Diocese of Northwest Texas, and Brian Rallison, who enrolled in CDSP’s residential MDiv program after participating in the June low-residency session, were each part of other residential seminaries before entering the low residency program—Rallison as a student, and Walters as the wife of a student. They have heard the common criticisms of lowresidency programs: that they either aren’t rigorous enough, or that formation of clergy can happen only in a residential community.

“I was told at another seminary that you form seminarians in community and that there is no other way of doing that,” Rallison says. “I listened to the justification for that, and I said that makes total sense.” But then he attended the June low-residency session.

“I cannot believe how quickly I have bonded with these 18 people,” he says. “I was in a residential seminary for two semesters, and I think I made relationships in the same way…. I probably talk to three or four of these people every week if not every other week still, and we are talking about the same things as I talk about with the person three or four doors down from me in the dorm.”

“What I found was the community aspect and being able to have the residential seminary experience even for two weeks was life-changing,” says Walters, who is pursuing a Certificate of Anglican Studies. “It was phenomenal. I felt like the students we have in the low-res program have a foundation that is at least as strong as students in many

C R O S S I N G S Fall 2016 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

residential programs. You’ve got professors, professionals and physicians who can’t just take three years out of their lives, and they are still committed to doing this.

“The caliber of professors we’ve had has been phenomenal. Last year it was so wonderful to have Ruth Meyers and Paul Fromberg [a 2014 DMin graduate of CDSP and rector of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco], in class right before General Convention. They were able not only to teach us in the class but give us some insight into what was going to happen at the convention. We had a perspective we wouldn’t normally have.

“And we had theology from Breidenthal.

Oh my goodness. He was just phenomenal,” she says, referring to Bishop Thomas Breidenthal of the Diocese of Southern Ohio, a 1981 graduate of CDSP who taught a class called Classics of Anglican Moral Theology during the most recent summer intensive.

“I wasn’t sure a low-res program could provide an ongoing community. I thought it might be like camp, but social media has allowed us to stay very close. That has been a wonderful part of the community that has been built.

“And then of course when we come together it is a wonderful thing to see each other again. And we know what has happened to each other during the year. We

Under Richardson, CDSP has positioned itself as a seminary that pays special attention to preparing students for public ministry.

know whose parent has died. We know who has been sick … My class does virtual morning prayer together. We are committed to maintaining these kinds of connections.”

Anthony Jones shares Walters’ feelings about the low-residency community. “I think one important thing about CDSP is starting the program with an on-campus experience with other people,” he says. “Even though we all came from varied backgrounds, we could look at each other and say, ‘Do you think we can get through this? Am I going to be able to do this?

“There was a real freedom, understanding

“I cannot believe how quickly I have

“…the community aspect and…the

bonded with these 18 people…”

residential seminary experience even

— B r i a n R all i s o n

for two weeks was life-changing.”

— J i ll W al t e r s

from the outset that this was going to be a safe place to talk. I knew right then I’d met people I’d be lifelong friends with.”

“Thrilled with everything” In the long run, it may be the people in students’ home dioceses who have the best sense of how well the low-residency program is preparing them for ministry. Richardson and Academic Dean Ruth Meyers were especially pleased by a note they received recently from the Rev. John McGinty, dean and canon for formation at the George Mercer Jr. School of Theology in the Diocese of Long Island.

“I have just been in conversation with our Anthony Jones, postulant of the Diocese of Long Island, who has recently made his first trip to CDSP as he begins the low-residency Masters in Divinity. I just had to write to express thanks to you both and to all there,” he wrote.

“Anthony has returned thrilled with everything about the place and the experience: the hospitality and humanity of everyone he met; the intensity and excellence of the studies, and more.”

The success of CDSP’s low-residency

program is gratifying to the seminary’s leaders not simply because it is difficult to establish a flourishing new program during a time when mainline Protestant seminaries are struggling with issues of sustainability. Under Richardson, CDSP has positioned itself as a seminary that pays special attention to preparing students for public ministry.

“Among the stated goals of our revised curriculum are to get our students ready to ‘join God’s mission of reconciliation, justice, and mercy’ and to make sure that they are able to ‘communicate the transforming power of the Gospel both within the church and in our culturally diverse world,’” Richardson says.

“The expertise that so many of the students in both the residential and low-residency programs bring to these tasks creates a special kind of culture in which ministering to the world outside of the church’s walls is never far from our minds.”

Church Divinity School of the Pacific • Fall 2016 C R O S S I N G S

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Who pays our

“CLIMATE DEBT”?

Ethicist Cynthia Moe-Lobeda explores the moral aspects of the climate crisis

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Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, professor of theological and social ethics at CDSP and Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, is among the leading Christian thinkers on issues of climate care. Her address, “Truthtelling, Inequity, and Christian Action,” was among the highlights of This Fragile Earth, a day of theological reflection on the church’s response to climate change held on October 22 at CDSP. She spoke with Jim Naughton about the ethical dimensions of climate change and “climate debt.”

While many Americans say they do not “believe in” climate change, the fact is that it is already happening. Who is most affected?

Who is most affected? That is really the crux of the moral issue for people of faith. The most affected are people who already are impoverished, especially in Africa, Asia and the Pacific islands, but also more impoverished communities in the Global North. It is important to note that this body of people is disproportionately people of color. So it’s especially non­­white people of the world, generally speaking, who are going to be—and already are—most vulnerable to being killed or displaced by climate change.

I was invited to India a few years ago to work with the church and seminaries on matters of eco-justice.

At that time, there were about 25

million climate refugees—people who had been displaced by drought and by flooding and by storms. And those were largely Asians and Africans.

Many studies have shown that one of the worst impacts of climate change will be increased hunger.

The World Bank says that by 2100, 44 percent of cropland will be hit by drought due to climate change.

The International Panel on Climate Change says that climate change will lead to a breakdown of food systems.

And we know that when food is scarce, people with money can still buy it, but people without money end up going hungry and even starving.

As I worked on this more, I realized that in the United States, it is also impoverished communities that will be hit the hardest. A study in California looked at who will be

iStock.com/Planet Flem

C R O S S I N G S Fall 2016 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

flooded out by climate change, and it showed the neighborhoods in Oakland that will be flooded are neighborhoods populated largely by low-income people, people of color, and people without English as the first language.

We have seen this dynamic already. I think Hurricane Katrina was the first vivid example to the broader public of how the worst hit are low-income people and people of color.

In the effort to combat climate change, what do richer nations owe to poorer ones, and what do richer people owe to poorer people?

That is the big sticky complex point in international climate negotiations. I would say it is an intensely moral question. How richer nations respond to it is going to shape life and death for millions of people. I think the question stems from the reality that climate change is caused largely by the world’s highconsuming people, but is suffered most by people who have not caused it. So what do we owe to the people who are going to suffer, be displaced, or die as a result of climate change? This question is articulated by many in the Global South who identify it as a matter of climate debt.

“The poorer nations are really stuck with the terrible situation that for them reducing emissions could mean foregoing economic development.”

— Dr.Cynthia Moe-Lobeda

Three main ways for addressing climate debt are being discussed. One is to obligate the wealthier nations, the high-consuming nations, to make greater emissions cuts. The second way is for these more climate-culpable nations to pay a significant portion of the cost of adaptation for the poorer nations. By “adaptation” we mean adapting to the conditions imposed by climate change. This includes things like changing water supplies so that they last longer, and working on crops so that they require fewer resources. And the third way is to pay the cost, or many of the costs, of mitigation. “Mitigation” means efforts

to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The poorer nations are really stuck with the terrible situation that for them, reducing emissions could mean foregoing economic development. So if the richer nations were to transfer money and technology to enable poorer nations to mitigate the effects of climate change without foregoing their own economic wellbeing, that is a third way that we can address the moral issue of climate debt.

You’re saying that efforts to respond “…climate change is caused largely to climate change by the world’s high-consuming harm developing economies. people, but is suffered most by Yes, some efforts people who have not caused it.” do tremendous harm, and often in ways — Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda we don’t recognize. I would say there are three ways that our responses to climate change can harm developing economies.

One is if we in high-consuming nations limit our efforts to protect against climate change to ourselves. We need to think beyond our own communities and countries, otherwise we could survive and leave others to die. A second damaging impact is that even really well-intentioned efforts to reduce carbon emissions by developing alternative sources of power can hurt poor people. I think about the biofuel industry using croplands to produce biofuels when croplands are needed to produce food, or constructing large dam projects to produce hydroelectric energy when those large dam projects actually wipe out many people’s land in, say, India or Haiti.

In the United States, we sometimes pass laws that make communities greener, but that raise housing costs as those communities become more desirable, and then poor people are kicked out. They often are people of color, so that becomes a form of environmental racism. Basically, we have to be really careful in analyzing who suffers and who gains.

The third form of harm happens if, in order to reduce emissions, we were to demand that poor and impov­erished economies don’t develop energy sources; that would also be very damaging. So we need to be careful to help cut carbon emission in ways that still produce much-needed energy.

And that’s producing renewable energy, not fossil fuel-based energy.

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What resources or frames of reference does the Christian tradition provide for thinking about issues of climate change and climate justice?

I think all religious traditions are called upon to bring their wealth of moral and spiritual wisdom to the public table to help address climate change and climate debt. Christianity has incredible resources to bring. One of them is an essential moral and spiritual teaching of the Christian faith, and that is to love your neighbor as yourself. This call to love neighbor as self includes creating public policies, businesses and institutions that serve the well-being of the vulnerable. Taking seriously the call to love your neighbor is one of our beautiful resources.

Another is the Christian understanding of the profound nature of sin. The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of the Orthodox tradition, who is known as the green patriarch, labeled climate change as climate sin.

We know in the Christian tradition we are in bondage to sin, but we also have freedom from sin through the power of confession and repentance and forgiveness. Of all traditions on Earth that could call people to public lament and repentance, Christianity promises grace and forgiveness. We can repent of the horror of having

“I think all religious traditions are called upon to bring their wealth of moral and spiritual wisdom to the public table to help address climate change and climate debt.”

— Dr.Cynthia Moe-Lobeda

been perpetrators of climate change because we know that by the grace of God we are forgiven and freed to turn in the other direction; that is, we can renounce climate sin and claim life-giving ways of living. And, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can live into those life-giving ways. To me there is a tremendous amount of hope in being able to name the brutality of the climate crisis given those promises.

How should individual Christians respond to climate change?

I think we should see the call to respond as both a gift from God to us and an obligation. One aspect of response is to change our lifestyles, as households and as institutions: the way we eat, our transportation, and how we produce and use energy.

CDSP’s new solar panels are a terrific example of this. A second step for individual Christians is to be involved in pushing for structural change.

Photos by Thomas Minczeski

C R O S S I N G S Fall 2016 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

Examples of that would be individuals who are encouraging churches and church-related institutions towards divestment from fossil fuels and reinvestment in renewable energy sources. It is just amazing how many faith-based organizations worldwide are considering some form of divestment and reinvestment. The Episcopal Church is one. Others include the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran World Federation, the Church of Sweden, and the World Council of Churches. And it’s not just divestment but reinvestment in renewable energy.

Individual Christians can push for structural change also by becoming very active in local and national and state policies. For instance, encouraging cities and towns to move toward carbon neutrality. This move could include moving toward public vehicle fleets that are non-fossil fuel.

A third form of engagement or response for Christians lies in shifting our worldview and theologies. To illustrate, we can take on a worldview that sees the impact of our lifestyles beyond interpersonal relationships to the impact on climate change. Theologically, we may return to the ancient notion of creation as sacrament—creation not just as an instrument to be used by human beings, but as the body of God or as dwelling place of the divine, a revelation of the divine and a gift of the divine.

Do you see any encouraging developments in the campaign to respond to climate change?

Oh, yes, encouraging developments are emerging all over the place in the church, in other religious communities, and in the broader society.

The question is: “Will we move fast enough?” One development is the movement I just mentioned: divestment and reinvestment. Another is the international transition town movement. The transition town movement is the shift toward towns and cities that are far less dependent on fossil fuels and that are more locally oriented. One dimension of that is the localized food movement that also is a movement toward more socially just food systems. This is a beautiful source of hope because industrial agriculture is one of the main sources of greenhouse gases.

The involvement of churches in the transition town movement and in the local food/food justice movement is tremendously encouraging.

The fact that so many faith communi­ties, Christian and otherwise, are taking on the task of becoming greening congregations or activist congregations regarding climate change and are incorporating creation into their understanding of worship and the sacraments is wonderful. And the generation of young people coming up that is committed to a less-consumptive lifestyle is also a tremendous sign of hope. The question for faith communities and for individual Christians is whether we will step to the plate and accept our calling to more earth-honoring, justice-seeking ways of life and forms of faith.

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Professor Cynthia Moe-Lobeda Church Divinity School of the Pacific • Fall 2016 C R O S S I N G S

by

L u S ta n t o n L e ó n

Finding their Bishop Jefferts Schori prepares students to practice public ministry

It never fails. When Jani Wild leaves her Tuesday night class at CDSP, she is totally revved up.

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“It’s an amazing class. I come out of it absolutely high, and I have to drive an hour home to calm down,” Wild says. “Few courses are this exciting.”

Wild is talking about “The Public Square: Engaging Emerging Opportunities,” a course taught by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church and this semester’s St. Margaret’s Visiting Professor of Women in Ministry.

“You’re inspired and the course has you thinking about things in such a different way,” says Wild, who is in her last year of seminary and commutes from San Jose, where she lives with her wife and five children. “The other day there was a pantsuit flash mob in New York City for Hillary Clinton.

That’s the public square. That’s people coming together about something they care about. This class is about finding those emerging opportunities and being ready for them. It’s like seeing that flash mob and saying, ‘Hey, this is a new way that people are

speaking out for things they believe in.’ Things like a flash mob can provide a snapshot of a new perspective.”

Jefferts Schori describes the class as an exploration of how pastoral leaders might participate in “constructive and elevated public dialogue that is at once civil and earnest, evangelical and thoughtfully critical, and energetically focused on a vision of the beloved community.”

She has been pleased by her students’ responses. “My sense is that the students in this class are going deep, both into the readings and their own questions and wrestling,” Jefferts Schori says. “The state of political discourse has been a recurrent theme, particularly in thinking about Jesus’ third way of non-violence, prophetic witness, and the structural realities of current pharaohs and empires.”

Second-year seminarian Aaron Klinefelter says, “It’s very much a seminar kind of class. We read a different author every week and have a discussion inspired by what we read as a launching off place. Next week we’re reading Michelle Alexander’s ‘The New Jim Crow.’ We’re hitting on issues of larger public import—racism, criminal justice. It all falls under the broad brush of social justice and how

C R O S S I N G S Fall 2016 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

do we serve as public leaders who are called not to just a small community but as ambassadors in the city.

“This particular election cycle has been so divisive and on a whole different level than elections in the past.

Part of our role is engaging in the public square and with the issues that really affect people, issues of human rights. Part of our pastoral role is walking with people and knowing that you’re going to have congregants who are on very different sides of the issue. How do you walk that line and still be that person’s pastor?”

Klinefelter says a book from the class’s syllabus, Parker Palmer’s “Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit,” offers great insight into that issue.

“Being able to hear peoples’ stories and facilitating ways to do that in a community is really important,” Klinefelter says. “The first week or so I wasn’t sure where the class was going. We spent a lot of time going around the room and letting people tell their stories. It was very revealing.

I’ve been here two years, and I heard and learned things about people I didn’t know before, things that gave me compassion and insight into who they were, and those were things I

Voices

“The state of political discourse has been a recurrent theme, particularly in thinking about Jesus’ third way of non-violence, prophetic witness, and the structural realities of current pharaohs and empires.”

— T h e R t . R e v . D r . K at h a r i n e J e f f e r t s S c h o r i Photos by Thomas Minczeski

“Part of our pastoral role is walking with people and knowing that you’re going to have congregants who are on very different sides of the issue. How do you walk that line and still be that person’s pastor?”

— A a r o n K l i n e f e lt e r

never would have known. Transporting that sort of thing into a congregation would be very powerful.”

Klinefelter says he signed up for Jefferts Shori’s class for many of the same reasons he and his wife and three children packed up and moved from Cincinnati so that he could attend CDSP. Among the reasons was the opportunity to study and participate in ministry in a multicultural, multiethnic community, an opportunity enhanced at CDSP by membership in the interfaith Graduate Theological Union.

“I wanted to learn something that would help me engage the surrounding culture, and to do it in a way that took seriously our role

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Marguerite Judson (left) and Jani Wild (right) are among the students in former Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s class C R O S S I N G S Fall 2016 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

in the larger political world,” he says.

The Rev. Matthew Woodward, rector of Transfiguration Episcopal Church in San Mateo, California, says the class “was scary and intimidating at first, and now I’m experiencing it as a blessing.” He is taking the course as part of a three-month sabbatical.

“This course is not just about our parish ministries but is asking where our church fits into the wider context of culture,” says Woodward, a native of London. “We’ve talked about how we can be involved in political discourse. We talk about how we can get beyond demonizing the other. This political season is all about painting the other in a bad light, and we all unconsciously tend to fall into that pattern. Some of the conversations we’ve had in the class, and the seminary in general, are how we get beyond that. Because of her experience in dealing with politics and the politics of the church, Katharine has been good about modeling the idea of engaging in a conversation that values difference.

“We’re reflecting on models of ministry from the past and how we might model ministry in the future by being good citizens, not just by running our own church institutions, but by engaging in public discourse in constructive ways with people we agree with and disagree with.”

During class, “Katharine gives us space to explore. I’ve felt lost sometimes, but in every class I’ve had moments of insight,” Woodward says. “What I’m doing after 15 years of ministry is exploring my paradigm of ministry and imagining new ways of doing what I do.

“The entire class is a free flowing conversation, but Katharine picks out concepts and

ideas from the reading for us to focus on. She is holding in her own mind ideas she wants to draw out of the texts we are reading, and rather than teaching us facts, she is modeling a particular way of having a conversation about being in ministry.

“It will be really helpful for me in my parish, as I ask myself, ‘What benefit is there to having an Episcopal Church in the middle of San Mateo? Are we good neighbors? Are we engaging with Lutherans, Muslims, Jews, people of no faith, in a way that helps to create a city that is better for everybody? If my church disappeared tomorrow, would anybody notice? Are we having an impact? Or are we just being a chaplaincy for the members who come every Sunday?’ She has us reflecting on what good are we doing in the community.”

The course also requires concrete action.

Each student must develop a project they would like to implement as part of their ministry. Wild is working on a project to aid homeless women.

“I’m working on how I would present this to the parish, what kind of sermons I could have, what kind of security I would need,” Wild says. “These are projects we want to make happen. It’s usable stuff. You think about the other classes you take that are building a foundation for you to go out and do work.

This class is taking that foundation and putting it all together.”

Wild says students have talked among themselves about why they enjoy the class.

“Students in the class have asked each other what makes Katharine such a great teacher. It is that she is actively listening in the classroom, and her presence brings active

…Katharine has been good about modeling the idea of engaging in a conversation that values difference.

— T h e R e v . M a tt h e w W o o d wa r d

listening to the rest of us, so the dialogue is very open and honest. Sometimes it’s just her facial expressions. She sees what you’re saying and she gets it, and she is totally excited to see that you get it. There’s a lot of back and forth, a lot of conversation, a lot of just listening and just being present.”

Jefferts Schori says she is “very much enjoying my time here. There is something quite awesome and wonderful about interacting with people who are thinking new thoughts and discovering new connections. Would that all God’s people were prophets!”

Church Divinity School of the Pacific • Fall 2016 C R O S S I N G S

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Solar

CDSP GOES

This Fragile Earth, a conference on the church’s response to the climate crisis, drew more than 100 people to CDSP on October 22. Participants heard keynote addresses from former Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori (CDSP ’94, ’01) and Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, professor of theological and social ethics at CDSP. The program also included a panel discussion moderated by Dean W. Mark Richardson and featuring Bishop Marc Andrus of the Diocese of California. The day culminated with the blessing of the solar panels that are now on the roofs of Parsons, Shires and Easton Hall. The panels constitute the largest solar installation at any seminary in the country.

“It’s past time for us to awaken to our need for one another, and the great gift of the diversity of creation,” Jefferts Schori told the gathering.

Text and video of both speeches and other events are online at: cdsp.edu/news/responding-to-climate-change Photos by Thomas Minczeski

Photo by Thomas Minczeski

CDSP Annual Fund CDSP is recruiting and forming the kind of students who give us reason to feel confident about the mission of our seminary and about the future of our church. Our job is not simply to find and form these students; with your support, together we can reduce the crushing burden of student debt that would otherwise stifle their ability to build new, pathbreaking ministries.

Your gift to the annual fund can continue to make a difference in the lives of our students.

Please use the enclosed giving envelope or donate online at cdsp.edu/giving/annual-fund/ today.

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have you accepted a new call, moved, or had significant changes in your life that you would like to tell us about? Complete this online form so we can share your news with others and share our news with you. cdsp.edu/cdsp-alumniinformation-form/

C R O S S I N G S Fall 2016 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

Faculty News Academic Dean Ruth Meyers has published an article, “Christian Marriage and Funeral Services as Rites of Passage,” in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, and two essays, “Worship and Mission: What’s the Connection?” in the September 2016 issue of Church Music Quarterly, and “Mission and Worship: Making the Connection,” in the July 2016 issue of Liturgy, the journal of the Liturgical Conference.

She also contributed a chapter to a new book, “Ecumenical Missiology: Changing Landscapes and New Conceptions of Mission,” just published by the World Council of Churches.

In June, the Association of Anglican Musicians held its 50th anniversary conference in Stamford, Connecticut.

Assistant Professor George Emblom convened a panel discussion titled “Vocation, Formation, and Church Musicians: Music in Seminary Formation.” The panel included the Rt. Rev. Keith Whitmore, assisting bishop of Atlanta, Virginia Theological Seminary M.Div. student Kyle Babin, the Rev. Canon Vicki Sirota, the Rev. Dr. William Roberts of Virginia Theological Seminary, Dr. Alan Lewis of Calvary Church, Pittsburgh, the Rt. Rev. Mary Glasspool, assistant bishop of the Diocese of New York, Emblom, and the Rev. Dr. Lizette Larson-Miller, formerly of CDSP and now of Huron University College, London, Ontario.

In July, Assistant Professor Julián González gave a presentation on postcolonial theology in the Summer Scholar Series at Shell Ridge Church in Walnut Creek, California, and also participated in the first session of the 2016-17 Teaching and Learning Workshop for Early Career Theological School Faculty at the Wabash Center.

Professor John Kater’s article “Through a Glass Darkly: The Episcopal Church’s Responses to the Mexican Iglesia De Jesús, 1864-1904” appeared in Anglican and Episcopal History (vol 85, no 2, pp. 194-227).

“More Than Communion: Imagining an Eschatological Ecclesiology,” by Visiting Assistant Professor Scott

MacDougall, was reviewed in the March 2016 issue of Expository Times, which named it Book of the Month. He led a special session at the 2016 American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature Conference titled “Elizabeth A. Johnson: An Eco-Theological Conversation on Creation, Cosmos, and Care” and interviewed Johnson on a Homebrewed Christianity podcast with host Tripp Fuller.

Professor Cynthia Moe-Lobeda gave the inaugural lecture in the Faith and Environment Lecture Series at Berry College in Rome, Georgia. Her title was “Climate Justice: Where Social Justice and Earth’s Well-Being Meet.” She also taught a seminar at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico as part of Earth Honoring Faith Climate Justice, gave the keynote address at the annual convocation of the Marianist Social Justice Collaborative in San Antonio, Texas, participated in a panel discussion on spiritual ecology at the Doug Adams Gallery of the Graduate Theological Union, and served as theologian-in-residence for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’’s National Organizing for Mission Cohort conference in Portland, Oregon. She has recently published essays in the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, Liturgy, and several collections. At the 2016 American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature Conference, she led the midAtlantic region’s panel on “EarthHonoring Faith and Climate Justice.”

Associate Professor Susanna Singer served on the leadership team for a Beautiful Authority conference for women clergy ages 50 and over and spent the summer in London doing research funded by a Conant Grant awarded by the Episcopal Church. In October, she gave a stewardship sermon and presentation at Christ Church, Alameda.

Assistant Professor Jennifer Snow spent the summer in Geneva doing research funded by the Conant Grant she was awarded in March. She has also been appointed to the executive committee of Province VIII of the Episcopal Church.

Community News

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Photo by Thomas Minczeski

Student News Brendan Barnicle ’17, Christie Fleming ’17, Jani Wild ’17 and Pete Homeyer ’18 were awarded scholarships to attend the Nuevo Amanecer Conference August 29 - September 1 at Kanuga Conference Center.

Aaron Klinefelter ’18 and Tamra Tucker ’18 were two of nine students across the Episcopal Church who were awarded named scholarships by The Society for the Increase of the Ministry.

Kathleen Moore ’19 attended the Evangelism Matters conference in Dallas in November.

Teresa Wakeen ’16, Jani Wild ’17, Ed Milkovich ’17, Charlotte Wilson ’16, and Christie Fleming ’17 attended the Preaching Excellence Program at the Roslyn Conference and Retreat Center in Richmond, Virginia.

Church Divinity School of the Pacific • Fall 2016 C R O S S I N G S

Alumni News The Rev. Kelly Aughenbaugh ’16 is the curate at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Lakewood and the vicar of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland. St. John’s was recently awarded a First Mark of Mission grant by the Episcopal Church to create an “ongoing, unconventional worshipping community.”

Paul Christensen ’61 received the 2016 Kyle W. Corwin Legacy Builder Award from the Vancouver (Washington) Business Journal.

Three members of the class of 1968 and their spouses have been appointed by their bishops to serve as chaplains to retired clergy and spouses and partners: the Rev. Canon Franklin S.H. Chun and Norma Chun of the Diocese of Hawaii, the Rev. Ronald Crocker and Donna Crocker of the Diocese of Western Massachusetts, the Rev. Stephen Norcross of the Diocese of Oregon.

The Rev. Mary Carter Greene ’14 is the director of children, youth and family ministry at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

The Most Rev. Paul Kwong ’82, ’16 has been made a commander of the Order of St. John by Queen Elizabeth II. Caroline McCall MTS ’15 joined CDSP as director of field education and lecturer in congregational studies in November.

The Rev. Rob Schoeck ’14 and the Rev. Lauren Schoeck ’13 were featured in Lancaster Online for a new addiction and recovery mass at St. James Episcopal Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where they serve.

In Memoriam The Rev. Charles W. Taylor, who served as a professor of pastoral theology at CDSP, died on July 3. He retired in 1998 after two decades of teaching and a decade of pastoral ministry.

Bob Rybicki, director of operations and personnel management at CDSP, died on September 3.

May light perpetual shine upon them.

The Rev. Tim Yanni ’16 has been called as chaplain at St. Mark’s Hospital in Salt Lake City.

The Rev. Gillian Davies ’16 has been called as bishop’s deacon at St. John’s Cathedral in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

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The Rev. Maggie Foote ’16 has been called as cross-cultural minister at the Latino Ministry Center in the Diocese of Southern Ohio.

The Rev. Canon Randal Gardner ’84 joined Church Divinity School of the Pacific as dean of All Saints Chapel in August.

The Alumni Council gathered at CDSP in October. From left to right: the Rev. Eric Metoyer (’10), the Rev. Ricardo Avila (’10), the Rev. Ron Culmer (’94), the Rev. Anne Smith (’10), the Rev. Dr. Dennis Tierney (’02), the Rev. Lynn Sanders (’04), the Rev. Andrew Hybl (’12), the Rev. Laurel Johnston (’06), Lauren Lukason (’14), the Rev. Dr. Dina Ferguson (’08).

Photo by Thomas Minczeski

The 2016 Alumni Convocation on October 13 included a forum with the Rev. Canon Rosa Lee Harden ’99, one of the founders of SOCAP, which Harden describes as “a network of heart-centered investors, entrepreneurs, and social impact leaders who believe in an inclusive and socially responsible economy to address the world’s toughest challenges.”

The Rev. Rodney Davis ’09, the Rev. Canon Rosa Lee Harden ’99 and the Rev. Canon Caryl Marsh ’77 were honored at the Alumni Convocation.

C R O S S I N G S Fall 2016 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

Former Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori ’94, ’01 preached at the Convocation Eucharist, and CDSP President and Dean W. Mark Richardson presided. Harden, the Rev. Rodney Davis ’09 and the Rev. Canon Caryl Marsh ’77 received honorary degrees. Davis is a retired associate justice on the California Court of Appeal, and Marsh is the retired rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Salt Lake City.

They are both former trustees of CDSP.

Well-made change by

The Rev. Dennis S Tierney, PhD ’02

Like the nation in the wake of the election and CDSP in the throes of the changes in theological education, I, too, am at a “crossing” as I retired in August from full-time parish ministry.

Even though I came to CDSP as a “late vocations” or “geezer” student, I did enjoy a 14-year career in parish ministry in two dioceses. In reflecting on my third and unexpected career, I find that I am especially impressed with the changes I have seen CDSP make in the past five years. While I have always felt that I had an excellent sem­­inary education in many ways, the intervening years of doing parish min­istry have convinced me that the seminary I knew and loved could not stand unchanged, because the need for high-quality, informed and culturally sensitive theological education is greater than ever before. I am so very

pleased that CDSP has made multiple reforms in campus life, staffing, recruiting, curriculum, teaching and assessment.

Some have argued that serious the­­­ ological education is no longer possible, or even necessary, in our world.

Seminaries are thought to be dinosaurs at the water hole. True callings to ordained, sacramental ministry, the argument goes, can be answered with­ out the bother of graduate education.

Seminary education, in short, is seen as a yoke imposed on individuals who seek to serve God and the church.

It is a yoke, but one to be sought rather than avoided. Our

understanding turns on the difference between yoke as noun and yoke as verb. As a noun, yoke is a device that is used to force animals or humans to carry a burden or heavy weight. It brings to mind obedience, domination, control and unrelenting work–discipline. But yoke as a verb simply means to join, to connect. And in joining together, we create bonds and communities that strengthen and assist us in our ministry.

If we delve deeper into that related and oft-misused word, disciple, formed from the same root as discipline, we find that disciple can refer to one who has taken a concept or idea apart—“dis,” meaning “apart,” and “capere,” meaning “to take hold of.” Disciple, in this sense, is one who has delved deeply enough into an idea or concept to be able to take it apart so as to better hold on to it. A disciple is one who can grasp intellectually, analyze thoroughly and then move others to emotion and action.

What this word study teaches us is that when we understand something in both its parts and in its entirety, then we can claim to be disciples who know that the yoke is easy and the burden light. Then we are living into theological education and not mere credentialism.

I see the recent curricular changes at CDSP creating a true “yoke” that is developing the leaders our church needs. CDSP is providing a “high con­ text” theological program that honors the cultures and experiences of students and marries that knowledge with the values and disciplines of the full academy. It creates disciples through innovative exposure to the traditional disciplines of the church, the university and the broader community.

Most importantly, in the last five years, CDSP has done much of the deeper inner work it needed to do, and can now bring new life to itself and to the church it serves. Its yoke is easier now—both for itself and for its students. And with the help of its alumni and friends, its burdens and the burdens borne by current and future students will be lighter indeed.

Church Divinity School of the Pacific • Fall 2016 C R O S S I N G S

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