2023 Honorees

2023 Distinction in Congregational Ministry

Jeffrey Haggray ’88 M.Div.

Jeffrey Haggray personifies a healing vision for church life in an era of political and racial upheaval. Where others have despaired or wandered away from denominational witness, he has used a prophet’s voice to give leadership and imagination to congregations. He has been the pastor of several American Baptist churches. He has served various denominational and ecumenical entities. This includes working for environmental justice with the Baptist World Alliance and racial justice with the National Council of Churches.

These skills require micro-level attention and macro-level creativity. In his work he hase fielded challenges ranging from church transformation and chaplaincy … to issues of refugee resettlement, disaster response, religious liberty, and restorative justice—in other words, the great array of things that people of faith are called to do in the world.

Currently he is executive director of the American Baptist Churches Home Mission Society. In that role he is also CEO of Judson Press and denominational director of Public Witness and Advocacy.

Across these many arenas, he has preached a message of gospel hope and fearless vocation. As he has put it, to pursue humanitarian purposes is to be in the very presence of God. He points to the life of civil rights hero John Lewis as an exemplar—a person of faith who finds one’s mission in life by hearing the summons, interrogating one’s own hidden fears and hesitations, and finding the freedom to act.

His faith in the power of congregational life flows into his spiritual politics, his ideas of beloved community and responsible citizenship. More than a decade ago, in Reflections journal, he made a plea to America’s politicians to respect the nation’s deepest wounds and dreams, and act upon them. There he said, 

“We need to replace fear-mongering with a renewed commitment to the importance of diverse people from all walks of life co-existing in a spirit of peace, community, and faith in God and one another.  I challenge us all to learn anew the importance of caring for one another as human beings who are made in God’s image …. We have yet to live up to the challenge God places before us.”

That was in Fall 2012—his prophetic words still wait to be heeded.

At the heart of YDS is the commitment to train people for the lay and ordained ministries of the church. The award for Distinction in Congregational Ministry annually goes to an individual who has shown exceptional pastoral competence in the work of the mission of local congregations. This year we are pleased to honor the Rev. Jeffrey Haggray.

2023 Distinction in Theological Education

Carolyn J. Sharp ’94 M.A.R., ’99 M.A., ’99 M.Phil., ’00 Ph.D.

Carolyn Sharp is Professor of Homiletics at YDS. And an Episcopal priest. And a biblical scholar: for 17 years, she taught Hebrew Scriptures at YDS—the first woman at YDS ever tenured in Hebrew Bible. Then she shifted vocationally to homiletics, making history again. To be a full professor in two disciplines in succession at YDS—that hadn’t been done before. To teach and write professionally in two quite different fields at Yale—that’s uncommon, to say the least.

But it’s not a surprise. Students talk about her zest for teaching across boundaries and the artful way she stirs their sense of calling to ministry or scholarship. 

She joined the YDS faculty in 2000 after earning a Yale Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible. After years of teaching the Hebrew Scriptures, she discerned an expansion of that initial vocation, now to include teaching and writing about the Gospels, Christian preaching, and ecological justice. This rounded out the arc of her calling: to nurture a message of grace and mercy for contemporary times, discover how the Hebrew Bible could enrich Christian preaching, speak to feminist perspectives on power, and motivate urgent environmental action. By 2012 she was ordained in the Episcopal Church. In 2017 she became Professor of Homiletics.

She’s written or edited a dozen books, with a special affection for the Hebrew prophets. In recent years she has published biblical commentaries—one on Joshua, another on Jeremiah 26–52, and a commentary on Micah currently in press. Another of her books provided an introduction to biblical prophetic literature. Her current book project examines the Gospel of Matthew as a rich resource for counter-imperial preaching.

Her sermons at St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church in New Haven, where she is preacher in residence, are models of high-spirited exegesis and heartfelt communication. She’s a gifted writer, editor, and mentor. In a YDS article by Emily Judd ’18 M.A.R., she offered vibrant advice to future faith leaders:

“First, stay present to the staggering beauty of complexity. Cherish the intricacies of every psalm, every theological argument, every family’s hesitant steps towards healing. Second: engage centering prayer. Dare to encounter the One who is beneath and beyond the narrative you are continually scripting in your life. What unfolds will astonish you.”

One of the finest traditions of YDS is its commitment to excellence in all dimensions of theological education. This award recognizes graduates whose scholarship, teaching or leadership, and contributions to vocational formation for ministry reflect the best of YDS and its distinguished faculty. We proudly give the award this year to Professor Carolyn Sharp.

2023 William Sloane Coffin ‘56 Award for Peace and Justice

Marylouise Oates ’73 M.Div.

Marylouise Oates—Oatsie to the world at large—has brought the skills of a journalist to a historic era in American life, and she has done it with great gusto, curiosity, and heart.

Writer and activist have been her mainstays, but those words don’t fully cover the impact of her passion for advocacy across six decades.

In 1964, as UPI’s youngest national reporter, she covered the Democratic convention and the Philadelphia race riots. She has kept a sharp eye on politics and society ever since, focusing on people who suffer because of bad public policy or historic hatreds. As Lauren Yanks ’19 M.Div. wrote in her YDS article about her, Oates learned about righting wrongs from her parents—her father was a union organizer, and her mother came from a political family.

As the 1960s convulsed, she was there. She joined Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential bid as a press secretary. She covered the Poor People’s Campaign. She was a leader in the Vietnam Moratorium movement.

In 1970 she and YDS found each other. Her Yale experience sharpened her ethical questions and gospel framework. She didn’t pursue the ministry, but Harry Adams taught her how to preach anyway. It would come in handy.

Her inquiring spirit rampaged through the decades. She worked for Lutheran Social Services and California Rural Legal Assistance. She pitched stories to the LA Times—and soon became a society columnist there. She broadened traditional society-page themes to include affordable housing and HIV/AIDS awareness, getting the attention of Betty Ford and Elizabeth Taylor. 

An old Yale friendship later had international impact: in the 1990s she collaborated with First Lady Hillary Clinton in the Vital Voices initiative, which invests globally in female leadership.

Her heart for women’s empowerment continues—in Los Angeles she spends time at the Downtown Women’s Center. In 2016, she created a YDS scholarship for mid-career women who want to go into ministry.

The list goes on. She worked to advance peace in Northern Ireland, she’s a novelist, a memoirist, a universally acclaimed chef—in short, a human dynamo, and a treasure to Yale Divinity School.

The William Sloane Coffin award commemorates the former Chaplain to the University and one of the great religious leaders of the 20^th century. The award recipient shares Coffin’s prophetic witness, a courageous devotion to the dignity of all persons, and has contributed significantly to the work of peace and reconciliation. We are excited this year to honor Marylouise Oates.

2023 Lux et Veritas

Richard F. Mollica, M.D. ’79 M.A.R.

Richard Mollica is a physician, professor of psychiatry, and for decades now a global pioneer in the health care and healing of traumatized populations. Up close—whether in Cambodia, Bosnia, Italy, Japan, or after 9/11 in the U.S.—he has faced some of the world’s deepest hurts, as well as its greatest longings for peace. 

For more than 40 years, he has focused on the needs of survivors of torture and mass violence—their physical injuries and health, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorders. Under his direction, the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma has led efforts in clinical care and training, certificate programs, policy reforms, and research benefiting people who’ve endured horrific atrocity. 

His message is one of hope in the power of human resilience. His work has taught him that people can recover from unspeakable violence. This was something he had to teach the psychiatric field, which long assumed that victims of violent horrors could not be healed. 

His writings make the argument that we all have a role in healing our societies. In 2018 he wrote the text for a book-length manifesto on “Healing a Violent World.” There, he called on healers of every type to reduce the pain of human suffering by following a greater vision of empathy and nonviolence. He stressed the pathway of justice as a vital force for human meaning and advancement: the pursuit of justice is intense, often tragic, yet transformative. He argued too that the experience of beauty should have a role in health. “There is no healing without beauty,” he wrote.

His training has taken him all over the world. He received his medical degree from the University of New Mexico in 1973 and completed his psychiatry residency at Yale Medical School. While at Yale he also earned an M.A.R. from YDS in 1979. His life’s work reflects a passion for global healing and a respect for the human spirit. 

In his book Healing Invisible Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World, he writes: “The trauma survivor reminds us all of our own vulnerability to tragedy and of the potential for society to abandon us … But another way is possible, as the story of victimization becomes a story of courage and the story of damage becomes a story of recovery.”

The Lux et Veritas is awarded for excellence and distinction in applying the compassion of Christ to the diverse needs of the human condition through the wider church, ecumenical organizations, not-for-profit groups, government, or industry. We proudly give the award this year to Dr. Richard Mollica.

2023 Dean’s Outstanding Service

Wes Poling ‘71 M.Div.

Dr. Wesley H. Poling earned his B.A. degree from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1968, an M.Div. degree from Yale Divinity School in 1971, and a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from the University of Connecticut in 1983. He began his higher education career in 1971 at Yale, where he served as Director of Alumni Records and as Director of the Agents Program for the Yale Alumni Fund. He then went on to serve eight years as Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland (1986-1994), followed by ten years as President of Kentucky Wesleyan College, Owensboro, Kentucky (1994-2004). Yale welcomed Dr. Poling back in 2004 as the Director of Graduate School Capital Giving. He has since retired, but still finds himself actively engaged with Yale University and the larger New Haven community, informally auditing classes, volunteering his time at New Haven Reads, and serving on the board of the Whitney Center (2014-2023) and on the YDS Alumni Board (2016-2023). He has been Class Agent for the Class of 1971 since 2020. He is married to the former Carol Young and they have two adult sons and four granddaughters.