The Modern Divines HDS STUDENTS AND ALUMNI SHAPE MINISTRY FOR A NEW MILLENNIUM
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n December 1815, President John T. Kirkland,
In the 200 years since Kirkland’s appeal—and the
appealed for support of the “best and noblest cause,
School’s founding—HDS graduates have shaped
which human benevolence is permitted to advance”:
religious communities large and small and extended
the education of ministers at Harvard University.
their influence far beyond the pulpit. Now, as the
His letter to the School’s alumni described society’s
Divinity School embarks on a third century of leadership
“peculiar” interest in these professionals:
in religious education, its students and alumni are
“We want him not to transact our business and to
expanding ministry in ways even their visionary
receive a compensation; but to be our friend, our guide, an inmate in our families . . . to receive from him impressions on a subject, which more than all others concerns us, and with which our improvement and tranquility through life and our future peace are most intimately connected.”
forebears might not have imagined. Both women and men, they serve followers of all of the world’s major traditions—or no tradition at all. Innovative and entrepreneurial, they bring ministry out of the house of worship and into the lives of people who need its touch. Most of all, these new leaders draw on religious resources to build community, work for justice, and help people everywhere lead richer, more meaningful lives.
THE HARMONY SOUNDS GOOD TOGETHER The education of progressive Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist ministers is literally embedded in Harvard Divinity School’s DNA. The legendary Rev. William Ellery Channing actually penned the 1815 appeal that went out in Harvard President Kirkland’s name. The list of graduates from the School’s first half century reads like a “who’s who” of UU—and early American— history: the writer and social critic Ralph Waldo Emerson, HDS ’25; the abolitionist Rev. Theodore Parker, HDS ’34; the “Saint of the West,” Rev. William Greenleaf Eliot, HDS ’34. The Rev. Erik Martinez Resly, MDiv ’12, represents a new generation of HDS alumni carrying on the progressive UU tradition. As founder of The Sanctuaries, an interfaith arts community in Washington, DC, Martinez Resly ministers to devout Muslims, Hasidic Jews, Evangelical Christians, Humanists, and many others. All come together to experience art as spiritual practice and to place their creative and theological imaginations in service to REV. ERIK MARTINEZ RESLY
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social justice.
