Calvon Jones ’18 M.Div.


Before coming to Yale Divinity School, I was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. graduated.  At Morehouse, I majored in Religious Studies and was involved in a number of social justice activities. I graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa on May 17th, 2015. Also, I had the opportunity to intern in the Office of Senator Cory Booker in Washington D.C., where my focus areas were civil rights, the economy, education, and crime.
 
Although a number of seminaries do not have chapel services anymore, I am so appreciative of the worship that YDS offers in Marquand Chapel. Worship and music are very significant in my life and have been even more essential since I have been at Yale Divinity School. There were days when I did not know what I had gotten myself into. I was challenged in a number of areas,  from wrestling with the strenuous hours of reading to completing the numerous writing assignments. I was also challenged emotionally by the loss of two aunts and two uncles in the same semester. This was very difficult because my home and family were back in North Carolina. However, those moments in Marquand Chapel healed my heart and encouraged me to keep moving. My soul was blessed by some of the most harmonious and melodious sounds, by the people from different denominations worshipping and singing together. 
 
I am striving to be a great catalyst for social equality; I believe that in order to produce a strong nation and government, we have to address the issues of the marginalized. The Church has an important role to play in honoring the lives of all people. I had the opportunity to have two summer internships at a church where this vision is embodied, the historic Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. I am humbled to have been invited to work after graduation as an Associate Pastor at Trinity, where the senior pastor is an alumnus of Yale Divinity School, Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III ‘94 M.Div.
May 1, 2018