Notes from the Quad
September/October 2003
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CONTENTS
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- Season of Rededication
- Parish Theological Sampler
- Convocation & Reunions
- Coffin to Present Award To Weiss
- Carpenter Scholars
- Center for Faith & Culture
- Regional Events
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THE NEWS
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SEASON OF REDEDICATION UNDERWAY
This fall, Yale Divinity School alumni, faculty and friends are celebrating the school’s renovation with four events intended to show off our revitalized community to as many people as possible. The Season of Rededication, commemorates a new beginning for the Divinity School, Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, the Institute of Sacred Music and the Yale Divinity School Library.
o SEPTEMBER 25
Rededication Ceremony and Reception
o OCTOBER 2
University-wide Open House
o OCTOBER 14
Convocation Ceremony
o OCTOBER 26
Connecticut Parish Theological Sampler
The Latest Renovation
Seven years after the decision was made by Yale to renovate its divinity school, the $49 million restoration is complete. The buildings and grounds around the Sterling Divinity Quadrangle have been razed and rebuilt, toppled and touched up, unmade and mended. Students are attending courses in new classrooms, studying in a refurbished divinity library, and gathering as a community in a revitalized chapel and common room.
The architects who rebuilt the school from the inside out (what’s known in the trade as “adaptive reuse”) have already won one award - a 2003 Design Honor Award in the category of Religious Architecture-Restoration from The Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture (IFRAA) and Faith & Form magazine - and many expect this will just be the beginning of the accolades for R.M.Kliment & Frances Halsband Architects.
SEPTEMBER 25 - Rededication Ceremony and Reception
The University’s formal rededication ceremony was presided over by President Richard Levin and honored the donors who made this day possible. Over 500 alumni and donors were invited to the event and special appreciation was given to the late Jack R. Howard and to the Lilly Endowment.
Jack Howard ‘32 was chairman of the Scripps Howard newspaper chain’s broadcasting division for 39 years, expanding it from two radio stations in 1937 to six television stations and three radio stations at his retirement in 1976. Mr. Howard served as president of The E. W. Scripps Company, the parent company of the newspaper, and broadcasting chains, from 1953 to 1976. He graduated from Yale University in 1932 and worked as a reporter for The Japan Advertiser in Tokyo, The Shanghai Evening Post, and the United Press wire service in Manchuria. He returned to the United States in 1933 and worked as a copy editor and a courthouse reporter for the Indianapolis Times. He then moved to The Washington Daily News, where he rose from police reporter to telegraph editor.
After his retirement, Mr. Howard helped found and served as president of the Scripps Howard Foundation, which distributes journalism awards and scholarships. His generous bequest to Yale for the renovation of the Divinity School is recognized through the naming of the Green in his memory. He was represented by his son, Michael B. Howard ‘65, and by his granddaughters.
Lilly Endowment Inc., established in 1937, is a private philanthropic foundation based in Indianapolis. The Endowment is best known for philanthropic leadership supporting religion, education, and community development. Its primary aim in the field of religion is to deepen and enrich the religious lives of American Christians, principally by supporting efforts to develop a new generation of talented pastors and to strengthen current pastors in their roles.
The Endowment has generously supported the renovation of the Sterling Divinity Quadrangle, as well as programmatic initiatives of the Divinity School and the Institute of Sacred Music.
The Yale Institute of Sacred Music commissioned Professor Thomas C. Duffy of the Yale School of Music to write Dedication Festivale, a piece of music for band and chorus composed for the rededication ceremony. The piece wasperformed by Professor Duffy, the Yale Concert Band and the Yale Schola Cantorum, conducted by Professor Simon Carrington, of the Institute and the Yale School of Music.
The work is in three parts. The opening movement incorporates traditional hymn tunes, whose texts contain building motives. The middle part for choir features settings of two works by New Haven composer Daniel Read (1757-1836), whose industry made New Haven a capital for sacred music. The closing section incorporates congregational singing of “How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place,” Psalm 84, the text a modified version of that found in the Scottish Psalter of 1650 and to the tune by J. Michael Haydn.
OCTOBER 2 - University-wide Open House
The School invited all members of the Yale community to come check out the new facilities. As part of this celebration the Institute of Sacred Music hosted a reception in honor of its current exhibit, “Christ on the Road to Bangkok” and the artist, Sawai Chinnawong.
Mr. Chinnawong, of Payap University, Chiang Mai, Thailand, is the 2003-04 Artist in Residence at the Overseas Ministries Study Center in New Haven. His artistry has been published by the Asian Christian Art Association, Indonesia, and the Tao Fong Shan Christian Centre, Hong Kong, and he is known for portraying Christianity through a Thai graphic idiom.
Live Thai music was also featured at the reception in the Great Hall of the Institute.
OCTOBER 14 - Convocation Ceremony
As part of this annual tradition at YDS, 200-300 alumni will converge on the school next week to reunite, worship and hear lectures by some of the world’s most eminent theologians and scholars.
In the morning alumni will attend a worship service commemorating the rededication with Pastor Kenneth Davis, a minister with Scottsdale, Arizona’s La Casa de Cristo Lutheran Church since 1999 and a 1995 YDS graduate. Lectures by David Kelsey, Nancy Ammerman and Ellen Davis will follow, and Dean Harold Attridge will give a State of the School address. The day will culminate in an Alumni Awards Banquet, with a special award given by Yale’s longtime chaplain, Bill Coffin.
OCTOBER 26 - Connecticut Parish Open House & Theological Sampler
During the Open House it will be possible to visit the facilities of Yale Divinity School, Berkeley Divinity School, the Institute of Sacred Music and the Yale Divinity Library. Students and faculty will be available to answer questions about theological education and student life at YDS. In addition, there will be a brief program offering samples of theological education.
Parking will be available next to the Divinity School. Refreshments will be available in the Common Room.
2:15 Welcome and Introduction to Yale Divinity School and its Partners
Niebuhr Hall Dean Harold W. Attridge
2:30 Resources for Local Congregations Carolyn Englehardt
Ministry Resource Center - Divinity Library
Anglican Spirituality Christopher Beeley
Niebuhr Hall
Faith in the Workplace David Miller
RSV Room
3:00 Feathered Psalms: Old World Prayer in the New Jaime Lara
ISM Great Hall
Reading the Book of Job John J. Collins
Niebuhr Hall
3: 30 Chapel: A Worship Sampler Chapel Ministers
4:00 Resources for Local Congregations Carolyn Englehardt
Ministry Resource Center - Divinity Library
Pastoral Care with Young Adults Kristen Leslie
Latourette Hall
4:30 Living with Difficult Texts Harold Attridge
RSV Room
Liturgical Film Margot Fassler
ISM Great Hall
5:15 Concluding Reception
Common Room
PLEASE RSVP by phone or e-mail:
203-432-5358
or
james.ebert@yale.edu
CONVOCATION & REUNIONS
The 2003 Convocation begins next week, and will feature lectures by Ellen Davis, David Kelsey, Charles E. Curran, Nancy Ammerman, Kathryn Tanner, and Ronald L. Grimes. The 2003 Alumni Awardees will be named, including a special award this year, in honor of Bill Coffin.
BILL COFFIN TO PRESENT AWARD TO CORA WEISS AT CONVOCATION
Veteran peace activist, Cora Weiss, will accept the William Sloane Coffin Award for Peace and Justice, to be presented by Bill Coffin himself at the Alumni Awards banquet during Convocation week.
Ms. Weiss began her work in the civil rights movement as the Treasurer for Martin Luther King’s Gandhi Society for Human Rights. She also worked in the movement against colonialism and for the liberation of African countries, and helped to organize Women Strike for Peace, a movement of women who protested atmospheric nuclear testing.
Later, Ms. Weiss helped organize demonstrations against the Vietnam War and created a bridge between American officers held as Prisoners of War in Hanoi and their families. “The issue of POW’s was used to justify a prolonged war,” she says. “I arranged for the increase of mail and packages which POW’s could receive from home and for the release of three POW’s before the war’s end.”
In 1978, Bill Coffin invited Ms. Wiess to lead the disarmament program to Reverse the Arms Race at The Riverside Church. In the ten years the program lasted, “we created an international peace pulpit and a church that was known for its peace and justice action,” says Ms. Weiss, who later started the International Office of Peace Action, the nation’s largest peace organization, which she represented at the United Nations.
In 1996, Ms. Weiss was elected President of the Hague Appeal for Peace, a post she still holds. In 1999, she organized and led a conference on the centennial of the world’s first peace congress held in The Hague in 1899. The 1999 meeting was the world’s largest peace conference with over 10,000 people attending, including most of the world’s moral authorities. Ms. Weiss’s current work includes promoting a global campaign to integrate peace education into schools and communities throughout the world. The Hague Appeal is currently working with the UN in four post conflict countries in an experiment to introduce disarmament and peace education as a means of sustaining the removal of small arms.
Ms. Weiss sees her work as making “this little place we call home, the earth, safer for our children and their children by designing innovative ways to reduce violence, to put an end to war, and to create a little more equality among all people: women people, people of color, people from different economic places,” she says. “Looking back, it seems that everything I’ve done, always with others, was done for the first time. And it’s always been for peace and justice. We thought for a while it had some impact, but it seems that everything now is unraveling at breakneck speed and whether we can restore hope and create decency will be up to your alumni, among others.”
CARPENTER FOUNDATION TO GIVE SCHOLARSHIPS
The E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation has awarded Yale Divinity School $250,000 over four years to inaugurate the Carpenter Scholarship Program, and four students have been named as the first cohort of Carpenter Scholars.
The launch of the Carpenter Scholarship Program marks the first time YDS has been able to offer stipends, a factor that has proven important to prospective divinity school students when choosing a seminary. The Carpenter Foundation hopes that by providing broader forms of assistance to students, YDS and other divinity schools will be able to better attract talented students who might not have otherwise been able to afford a graduate-level education.
Amanda Blank, Joo-Hwan Lee, Katya Ouchakof, Peter Tierney, will each receive full tuition scholarships throughout their years at the School, and Ms. Blank and Mr. Tierney will also receive an annual stipend of $5,000 during their time at YDS. The criteria used in making selections for the Carpenter Scholars include candidates in the M.Div. program who have demonstrated exceptional academic achievement, leadership ability, communication skills, and emotional and spiritual maturity. Four more Carpenter Scholars will be named for the 2004-2005 entering class at YDS, two of whom will also receive a stipend.
“The Carpenter Foundation’s grant will allow Yale to raise the quality of applicants choosing to come to Yale Divinity School,” said Dean Harold W. Attridge. “The Carpenter Scholars program will both deepen and broaden the base of financial support offered to the most promising divinity candidates.”
Amanda Blank is a native of Wisconsin and a 2003 graduate of Viterbo University in LaCrosse where she majored in Religious Studies and English. Blank, a member of the United Church of Christ, is an M.Div. candidate and hopes to pursue a career as a professor of Religious Studies.
Joo-Hwan Lee received his BA degree in History from Yale University in May and will begin his M.Div. studies this fall with the intention of becoming a professor of Religious Studies and/or Philosophical Theology. A native of Seoul, Korea, he currently calls Oklahoma City home. At Yale, Lee was elected to the National History Honor Society and held leadership positions in the Korean International Students Community.
Katya Ouchakof comes to YDS after a year of volunteering at All Saints Pastoral Centre in England. She is seeking ordination in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) and preparing for a career in ministry. Ouchakof graduated in 2002 with a major in psychology from Luther College where she was a member of PsiChi, the National Psychology Honor Society and a dean’s list student.
Peter Tierney is an Episcopal aspirant in the Diocese of Rochester, New York and is hoping to be ordained a priest at the conclusion of his M.Div. studies. He is a 2003 graduate of Hobart College, with majors in English and in Expression and Interpretation. He has spent several summers in a leadership role at a camp that encourages exploration of spirituality through artistic creativity.
“This is the first time Yale Divinity School has been able to award stipends that cover cost beyond tuition, which provides us with new capacities in recruitment of top students with significant financial need and prior debt,” said Anna T. Ramirez, Associate Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid. “Undergraduate debt loads often prevent students from making the best choice for their theological education. Many decide on a seminary based on the amount of financial support offered them. These stipends will help to ease the loan amounts they might take.”
E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation is a private foundation with its principal offices in Philadelphia. The Foundation’s grant-making guidelines include graduate theological education.
Yale Divinity School, a graduate professional school of Yale University, currently has 411 students pursuing three degrees: Master of Divinity, Master of Religion and Master of Sacred Theology. YDS is also the academic home of the School’s partners in theological education: the Berkeley Divinity School and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. The three institutions share a common mission of training leaders for communities of conviction.
CENTER FOR FAITH & CULTURE TO LAUNCH
The Yale Center for Faith and Culture, under the direction of Miroslav Volf, Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology, has opened its doors at YDS. The Center’s mission is to promote the practice of faith in all spheres of life through theological research and leadership development. David W. Miller, founder of the The Avodah Instutute, is the Center’s Executive Director, overseeing its programs, special initiatives, and daily operations.
The Center will be a locus for research, symposia, and special programs, all linked to promoting practices of faith in all spheres of life and supporting communities of conviction, particularly those in the marketplace. It will have three main constituents: clergy, academics, and business people.
YCFC is comprised of two programs. The “Faith as a Way of Life” program, housed in the Center, is funded by the Lilly Foundation and led by Associate Director Maurice Lee. Second, the YCFC will develop a program on “Business Ethics and Spirituality in the Workplace,” which David Miller will direct.
For more information, go to www.yale.edu/faith or call 203-432-8671.
REGIONAL EVENTS
The YDS Road Show is coming! Check back frequently to see when Dean Attridge and the gang will be coming to your town.
October 18
Charlotte, NC
Christian Churches/Disciples of Christ Biennial
YDS Alumni Lunch
Charlotte Convention Center
Area Alumni/ae are also invited to attend, as are spouses, significant others, and prospective students. All General Assembly and area alumni/ae are encourage to RSVP by Friday, October 10 to the YDS Alumni Office 203.432.3871 or james.ebert@yale.edu.
Lunch tickets are $10 and may be purchased at the Convention Center, but please to RSVP in advance.
Room 208A
Noon
November 23
Atlanta
American Academy of Religion & Society of Biblical Literature meeting
Joint YDS & Department of Religious Studies Alumni Reception
9 p.m.
OTHER ALUMNI EVENTS WILL BE HELD IN:
Boston
Hartford
St. Louis
Westchester County
2004
April 19-23
San Francisco and Silicon Valley Alumni Events
DETAILS TO COME.
May 12
New York
Alumni Reception
St. Bartholomew’s Church
51st and Park Avenue
TIME TO BE ANNOUNCED