From the concert hall at DorothyYoung Center to the rafters ofSeminary Hall, Drew sang,

cheered and paraded in style to celebrate Dr. Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan’sinstallation as dean of the TheologicalSchool on April 8, 2011. Esteemedguests Vivian Bull of Linfield College,Orlando Espin of the University ofSan Diego, Choon-Leong Seow ofPrinceton Theological Seminary,Beauty Maenzanise of Africa Univer-sity, as well as seminary presidentsDale Irvin of New York Theological Seminary and Gregg Mast of New Brunswick Theological Seminary participated in theSymposium on Global Theological Education. Mark Miller lead

the Seminary and Ubuntu Pan-African choirs in a concertthat featured original works byMiller, including Let Justice Roll,a setting of Martin Luther King’s“Letter From BirminghamJail,” with choir, brass, timpaniand organ. The service of installation included a layingon of hands by BishopSudharshana Devadhar of The United Methodist Churchand Drew University provostPamela Gunter-Smith, aschurch and academy found

common cause for excitement in Drew’s emergence into the future of global theological education.

From the Dean 2

Installation Address 4

New Faculty 6

Spring 2011 Lectures 7

Congress on Ecstatic Naturalism 7

Tribute to David Graybeal 8

Tribute to Anne Yardley 9

Spring 2011 Visiting Speakers 10

Shalom 10

Tribute to Rebecca Laird 11

Brazilian Pastors 11

Honors Convocation Address 12

Matriculation Address 14

Scent of Korea 17

In Memoriam 17

Commencement 2011 19

Upcoming Events 20

Inside

Jeffrey Kuan Installed—Drew Celebrates

VOL. 9, NO. 2, FALL 2011

TheoSpiritNEWSLETTER OF THE DREW UNIVERSITY THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL

In the spring semester I appointedProfessor Morris L. Davis as the newassociate dean for academic affairs of

the Theological School, effective July 1,2011. Professor Davis succeeds DeanAnne Yardley, who retired at the end ofthe last academic year.

Professor Davis is currently also as-sociate professor of the history of Chris-tianity and Wesleyan/Methodist studiesin the Theological School. A graduate ofthe Drew University PhD program in2003, Professor Davis joined the facultyof the Theological School that sameyear. Hence, he brings with him intothis position of academic leadership agood history and familiarity with theTheological School and the University.

He is well liked and respected among his faculty and staff colleagues and stu-dents. He is also a very respected scholaramong his peers in the field of Christi-anity in the Americas in general andWesleyan/Methodist studies in particu-lar in academia. Professor Davis is described by his colleagues as a very

New ASSOCIATE Dean for Academic Affairs MORRIS DAVIS

(photos on page 3)

(continued on page 2)

by Lydia York, PhD Candidate

by Kah-Jin Jeffrey KuanDean of the Theological School

2 FALL 2011

energetic person with strong administrative gifts. In his work as afaculty, he is known to be a careful,creative thinker, one who has a vision for theological education aswell as the capacity to think institutionally. As a teacher, he caresvery much for his students.

I am already working closely with Professor Davis as the new associate dean for academic affairssince he stepped into the position. Iam very confident that he will providestrong leadership to the academic lifeof the Theological School.

Ihad the honor of welcoming a new class of students tothe Theological School. This new class is composed of50 MDiv, 7 MAM, 4 STM, 12 MA and 13 PhD students.

In addition, we have also admitted 58 DMin students whowill be starting the program in the various cohorts aroundthe country. There is a lot of excitement and energyamong the students, even as the university recovers fromthe devastation that Hurricane Irene left behind.

We began this academic year with a new Associatedean for academic affairs in Dr. Morris L. Davis, AssociateProfessor of the History of Christianity and Wesleyan/Methodist Studies. Dean Davis is already hard at work incarrying out his administrative duties and meeting withstudents. We also welcomed two new faculty membersand a post-doctoral fellow. Dr. Kate M. Ott joins us as assistant professor of Christian social ethics and Dr. ElíasOrtega-Aponte as assistant professor in Afro-Latino/a religions and cultural studies. Dr. Ortega-Aponte will teachcourses both in the Theological School and the College of Liberal Arts, an appointment that strengthens our collaboration within the university. Dr. David F. Evans, our own PhD graduate, is appointed to the post-doctoralfellow position as lecturer in the history of Christianity.We know that all three new faculty will be excellentteachers for our students.

As we begin a new academic year, I am reminded ofDrew Theological School’s impact and contribution in theglobal context. I had the privilege of visiting Drew

alumni/ae in Hong Kong,Taiwan and South Koreathis summer. Many of thealumni/ae I met are in-volved with andcontributing to theologicaleducation in their own countries. They spoke with greatappreciation of the education they received at Drew andthe professors who taught them. Drew’s influence inKorea, in particular, is historic. Methodism was brought to Korea by Henry G. Appenzeller, a graduate of theTheological School in 1885. As such, Methodists in Koreacontinue to feel a sense of gratitude and indebtedness toAppenzeller (see page 14 for more on Appenzeller and alsoTheoSpirit, Vol. 4, No.1 [2005]). Appenzeller’s connectionwith Drew has brought hundreds of students from Koreato Drew. Today, a number of our alums are serving as presidents of universities and seminaries, and we havealumni/ae teaching in almost all of the Protestant seminaries in Korea. I have been told by many alumnithat Drew sounds much like a Korean word meaning“everywhere.” Indeed, Drew alumni/ae are “everywhere”in Korea and other parts of the world. That is the legacy of Drew, and I am proud to be associated with it!

2

From the Dean

TheoSpiritKah-Jin Je!rey Kuan, DeanDrew Theological SchoolMadison, NJ 07940973.408.3582 • jkuan@drew.edu

Editorial Sta!:Maria Lise IannuzziLydia YorkSungchun Ahn, photographerall photos Sungchun Ahn except where noted

Please send comments to:miannuzz@drew.eduPast issues can be viewed at:drew.edu/theo/spirit

Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan

Courtesy of Drew

Publications

TheoSpirit

Dean Davis (continued from page 1)

facebook.com/pages/Drew-Worship/342968014801

Visit Drew Worship and Drew Theological Schoolon Facebook for video and photos.

3

Dean Kuan’s Installation (continued from page 1)

We AbideCommissioned for the dean’s installationWritten by Laurie Zelman and Mark Miller

If we lay all we seekOn the altar of LoveThe work of our hands and our mindsTrusting all that we needFlows and flowers from GodOur thristing will be satisfied

When we burn with a holy desireTo fulfill everything that God requires

Making justice togetherWalking close to each otherReaching past all the things that divideHumbly offering kindnessSinging hope and forgivenessWe abide in God’s love, we abide

For the cities shall bloomAnd the earth be restoredThe hurts that we bear start to healAs the faith of the pastIs refreshed and reformedThe word of our God is made real

Mark Miller o!ers up the seminary and Ubuntuchoirs to an enthusiastic crowd.

Gerald Lord, Assoc. Gen. Secretary of the DHEGBHEM and Prof. Johnson-DeBaufre recess.

TSA president Lauren Godwin conveys one ofthe symbols of the o"ce to Dean Kuan.

Provost Gunter-Smith and Bishop Devadharo!er the prayer of dedication over Dean Kuan.

Soloist Matthew Grimes, T’97 sings DreamVariation, words by Langston Hughes and

music By Mark Miller

to make a gift in honor of Dean Kuan, visit drew.edu/alumni/giving-to-drew

TheoSpirit4 FALL 2011

Installation Address: Journey to The Eastby Kah-Jin Jeffrey KuanDean of the Theological School

President Robert Weisbuch,Provost Pamela Gunter-Smith,Bishop Sudarshana Devadhar,

Bishop Jeremiah Park, Bishop Hee-SooJung, Bishop John Shelby Spong, theRev. Dr. Hae-Jong Kim, members ofthe Board of Trustees, fellow deans andpresidents of the Association of UnitedMethodist Theological Schools, deansand presidents of seminaries, delegatesof academic institutions and ecclesialbodies, especially the General Board ofHigher Education and Ministry, col-leagues on the cabinet, faculty andstaff, alumni/ae and students and dis-tinguished guests, greetings in thename of Jesus Christ and of all that isholy!

I stand before all of you todaykeenly aware of the enormous honorand task that the communities of faithand higher education have conferredupon me. I stand in a long tradition ofsignificant presidents and deans of theTheological School. I am honored bythe presence of three of my predeces-sors, Dean Fishburn, Dean Sweet andDean Yardley.

I am grateful for the presence ofmy family with me today from the BayArea, Australia and Singapore. I hopethat my late parents are smiling uponme this day. My parents grew up inMalaysia during the Second World Warand never had the educational oppor-tunities that they eventually madesacrifices for all their eight children tohave. My father would always tell all ofus that the inheritance we would re-ceive from him is our education, and sohe worked hard so that he could sendall of us abroad for our college educa-tions. I wish they could have lived thisday to witness their son serving aschair of the Division of HigherEducation of GBHEM and installed asthe dean of a university’s theologicalschool. By conferring this high honorupon me, you join me in honoring thelegacy of my late parents.

As a child growing up in Malaysia,I had a particular fascination with theChinese legend and folktale, Journey tothe West (X Yóu Jì; ), also knownas the legend of the Monkey King, SunWukong. This is a fictionalized story ofthe journey of a famous ChineseBuddhist monk, Xuanzang ( ), whoset out on a journey to India to retrievethe Buddhist sutras of “transcendenceand persuasion for good will” back tothe East in order to help deal with theendemic greed and evils of his society.On his way, he met and took on fourdisciples, most notably, Sun Wukong ( ) and Zhu Bajie ( ),Monkey King and Pig, respectively. As a child, I was most fascinated withMonkey King, who is bold, daring, mis-chievous and rebellious. He has alsomastered the art of polymorphic trans-formation.

This story reminds me of my ownjourney into theological and higher ed-ucation, one I would describe as aJourney to the East. It all began with acall to ordained ministry when I was17. My journey took me slightly east-ward to Singapore for my theologicaleducation. There I was known as amischievous and rebellious seminarian.

Returning to Malaysia to serve as apastor, I quickly discovered that Ineeded to expand on my learning, andso with boldness and daringness as ayoung adult, I uprooted and took myfamily eastward, crossing the PacificOcean to the United States, first toDallas, and then to Atlanta, wherestudying the sacred scriptures becamethe focus. That journey would take mewestward to teach at the Pacific Schoolof Religion for almost 20 years. Sincethen, I have criss-crossed the four di-rections so much that it is hard to tellwhich is east and which is west, letalone north and south. In defiance ofany GPS system, I am beginning to seethat what I am called to in this Journeyto the East, much like the fictionaljourney of Monkey King, is a calling tothe pursuit of “transcendence and per-suasion for good will.” In the lingo oftheological schools, we say it is a call-ing to prepare leadership for thetransformation of the world.

Whenever we hear “trip,” we arebound to ask for a “destination”; whenwe hear “journey,” we likely think oflaborious wilderness wanderings.However, as it is found in all great stories and histories of our human experience, we all know that there isnever a fixed “point of arrival,” and theadventure lies in Monkey-King-likepolymorphic transformations on theway. “When do we get there?” seemssecondary to “how?” and “why?” Inhigher and theological education forthe training and preparation of reli-gious and academic leadership, we callthis the obsession with “content” and“method.” Put differently, how do weas theological educators help our stu-dents embark on their journeys, andhow do we walk alongside them intheir journeys?

Drew Theological School has beenon a journey in theological educationfor more than 140 years. Along the

5

way, there have been incredible poly-morphic transformations, and such alegacy cannot be more apropos for the-ological education in the 21st century.As many of Drew’s distinguished facultyhave expressed, in this increasingly plu-ral world, in which localities areintricately linked in webs of global con-nection, theological education mustfind expression in multiplicity, commu-nal and global partnerships, and suchcritical hermeneutic frameworks aspluralism, feminism, liberationism,postcolonialism and ecological and en-vironmental responsibility toward thepursuit of the flourishing of humanityand the Earth. Additionally, theologicaleducation must be attentive to themultiplicity and polyvalency oftongues, making necessary the particu-larity and centrality of voices fromacross racial, cultural and religious de-marcations. Taking seriously our sharedlot in a global community, theologicaleducation is not just interested in“small talk”—we strive for hard talk,demanding friendships and challengingpartnerships. This particular orientationof our journey in theological educationrequires polymorphic transformationsof our cultural and theological imagi-nation, as Taiwanese cultural theoristKuan-Hsing Chen puts it, to “[diver-sify] our frames of reference, multiplyour perspectives and enrich our subjec-tivity” (Asia As Method, 255).

Drew Theological School is alreadypositioned to respond to polymorphicshifts. We not only have a very diversestudent body, but our mission state-ment also speaks succinctly about“historical commitments to African,Asian, African-American and Hispanicministries.” We teach ministry as cul-turally contextualized because weunderstand human beings and humancommunities to be culturally contextu-alized. De-centering monolithiccenters, we robustly seek ways to de-velop polycentric curricula, to prepare“pastors, preachers and prophets, dea-cons, activists and teachers” forchanging cultural and religious land-scapes in the United States.

My hope as dean is that our theo-logical education here at Drew willincreasingly become more global in itsorientation. Expanding transnationalteaching and learning relationships, I

hope we can begin to explore togetherwhat progressive Christianity and pro-gressive religion can look like in aglobal context. I am very confident thatDrew Theological School’s pioneeringlegacy will help move us in our jour-ney of theological education.

Founded by the audacious spirit ofthe Methodist Episcopal Church to es-tablish a national seminary, Drew hasbeen a pioneer in many aspects. It wasthis spirit that led to the appointmentof Mildred Moody Eakin as the firstfull-time woman faculty in 1932, to befollowed by the appointment of NelleMorton in 1956. It was this pioneeringspirit that led the school to appointGeorge Kelsey as the first African-American and non-white person ontoits faculty in 1951. It was this pioneer-ing spirit that led the faculty of theTheological School in 1986 to make anintentional decision to increase itswomen and racial-ethnic representa-tion on the faculty. Today, our faculty is45 percent women and 45 percentracial-ethnic. It was this same pioneer-ing spirit that led the school to appointMaxine Clarke Beach as the firstwoman to lead a United Methodist the-ological school in 2000. Here I standtoday, a beneficiary of this pioneering

spirit, which has become a hallmark ofDrew Theological School, a spirit ofboldness and daringness to call me asthe first Asian American to lead one ofour United Methodist theological semi-naries. It is this pioneering spirit thathas allowed Drew to form numerousclergy, religious leaders and scholars inthese last 144 years, leaders who are inturn transforming faith communitiesand shaping new academic disciplines.

And it is all of this, my friends,which makes Drew Theological School“a very special place.”

We have a responsibility as inheri-tors of this special place. We areaccountable to our forebears who livedout Drew’s longstanding pioneeringspirit. We have a responsibility to thechurch, to faith communities to formreligious leadership that is relevant andresponsible to the 21st century. We areaccountable to academia for maintain-ing rigorous intellectual traditions thatare freeing, equitable and accessible.We are responsible to public life thatour theological education leads to thedismantling of all forms of oppressionexercised on account of gender, race,class, sexual orientation, religion, abil-ity. We believe in these responsibilitiesbecause we are persuaded by the tran-scendence of the common good.

In the conclusion of the story ofthe Journey to the West, Xuanzang, themonk, and Sun Wukong, the MonkeyKing, are both transformed and achieveBuddhahood. My Journey to the East,which started with theological educa-tion and ministry and pushed metoward a global theological education,has been a journey of polymorphictransformations. As I continue to headeast and eventually come full circleback in Asia, I am no longer the sameperson that began this journey 36 yearsago, nor is Asia the same place that Ileft. Likewise, Drew Theological Schoolis hardly the same school that began144 years ago. In our respective and in-tertwining journeys, I hope that “we’vebeen changed for the better,” and that“we’ve been changed for good!”

�“Taking seriously our shared lot in aglobal community,

theological educationis not just interested

in ‘small talk’—we strive for hard talk,

demanding friend-ships and challenging

partnerships.�”

TheoSpirit6 FALL 2011

Dr. Kate M. Ott holds a doctorate from Union TheologicalSeminary in New York. Her recent academic and

activist work place children and youth at the center of inquiry using a feminist and critical social ethics lens. She recently published “Searching for an Ethic: Sexuality,Children, and Moral Agency” in New Feminist Christianity:Many Voices, Many Views, in addition to her forthcomingbook, Let’s Talk about Sex: A Christian Parent’s Guide fromToddlers to Teens. Dr. Ott is also co-editor of Just Hospitality:God’s Welcome in a World of Difference and the forthcomingFaith, Feminism, and Scholarship: The Next Generation.

In fall 2011, Dr. Ott will offer a seminar on ethics andagency in children and youth and a medical and healthcare

ethics course. In spring2012, she will teach theChristian ethics core courseand offer a seminar inFeminist Ethics. Prior tocoming to Drew, Dr. Otttaught as a lecturer at Yale UniversityDivinity School and Union Theological Seminary. In addition, she was the deputy director of the ReligiousInstitute, a nonprofit committed to sexual health, education and justice in faith communities and society.There she led the project and publication of Sex and theSeminary: Preparing Ministers for Sexual Health and Justice.

Elías Ortega-AponteAssistant Professor of Afro-Latino/a Religions and Cultural Studies

The Rev. Dr. HeatherMurray Elkins was

named the 2010-2011University Scholar/Teacher of the Year, anaward funded in part bythe General Board ofHigher Education andMinistry of The United

Methodist Church. Dr. Elkins is professor of worship,preaching, and the arts at Drew Theological School and theGraduate Division of Religion at Drew University. An or-dained elder in The United Methodist Church, she servedcongregations for eight years in her home conference ofWest Virginia. She began her teaching career as an instruc-tor at Rough Rock, Ariz., the first bilingual community-run

school on the Navaho Reservation. In 2001 she helped toinitiate the faculty exchange program at Ewha Woman’sUniversity in Seoul, South Korea, teaching liturgical theol-ogy and worship. One nomination of Dr. Elkins forScholar/Teacher of the Year reads, “As a creative and imagi-native teacher, Dr. Elkins continually helps Theo students todeeply and richly experience the meaning of worship andpreaching and has actively served various churches and aca-demic areas, Academy of Homiletics and North AmericanAcademy of Liturgy and as a prominent lecturer/scholar. Iam convinced that she deserves to be the Theo SchoolScholar/Teacher of the Year.”

Another student writes,“I would like to nominate Dr.Heather Elkins for her amazing sensibility and gift for invitingdiverse groups of students at Drew to classes, groups, worksand worship moments.” Congratulations, Dr. Elkins!

Heather Murray ElkinsNamed Scholar/Teacher of the Year

Dr. Elías Ortega-Aponte is an

Afro-Latino scholarfrom Puerto Ricowhose areas of expertise are critical

race theory, critical theory, cultural sociology, Latino/a cultural studies, Africana studies, and religious ethics. He received his PhD in social ethics from Princeton

Theological Seminary. His primary concern is with the theorization of how the intersection of race and political actions leads to acts of resistance among Afro-diasporic communities. Dr. Ortega-Aponte approaches teaching froma transdisciplinary perspective that is committed to socialjustice. His research interests includes prison and economicjustice, social mobilization, and issues broadly affecting Blackand Latino/a communities.

Kate M. OttAssistant Professor of Christian Social Ethics

New Theo School Faculty

Spring 2011 Lectures:Challenge, Enlighten, Question

Spring 2011 provided the DrewTheological School community with

three outstanding lectures, bringing tocampus major scholars in the areas ofwomen’s issues in society and theology,religion in antiquity and Latino/a theology and religion. These lectures offered opportunities beyond the classroom to challenge our awareness,enlighten our thinking and question our understanding.

The Nelle Morton Lecture, onMarch 1, featured guest speaker Dr.Evelyn Parker, associate professor ofChristian education at Perkins School ofTheology. Her lecture, “Black, Red, andYellow Bone: Contours of Young AdultFemale Bodies,“ explored the stereo-types about black young women/girls’bodies, broadly, and mixed-race girls’bodies in particular, in the context of a white supremacist ideology in NorthAmerican society. Dr. Parker empha-sized the sociocultural andsociohistorical contexts that shape thediscourse about mixed-race youngwomen’s bodies. While all girls strugglewith stereotypes about their bodies, thestruggle is particularized with racial/ethnic minoratized young women/girlsand even more specific with those ofmixed-race heritage.

On March 16 the Halstead Lecture,“Philosophical Meditations onMysticism and Messianism,” broughtKarmen MacKendrick, the Joseph C.

Georg Professor inthe philosophydepartment at Le Moyne Collegeand Elliot R.Wolfson, theAbrahamLiebermanProfessor ofHebrew andJudaic studies atNew YorkUniversity, toCraig Chapel. Dr. MacKendrickspoke on “Oblivion,Hope, and Infinite Suspense,” and Dr.Wolfson addressed, “Awaiting withoutan Awaited: Messianic Patience and theFutural Undergoing.” These dialogicalreflections on messianism, both Jewishand Christian, pre-modern and post-modern—indeed post-messianic!—traversed the thought of Rosenzweig,Levinas, Derrida, Blanchot andAgamben.

The 16th-Annual Hispanic/Latino/aTheology and Religion Lecture was heldon March 31 with Bishop Juan Vera-Mendez, bishop emeritus of theMethodist Church of Puerto Rico,speaking on “Prophesying from within aU.S. Colony: A Puerto Rican PastoralJourney.” He questioned: What does itmean to be a Christian and try to shareGod’s prophecy in the present momentin a country called Puerto Rico? Andwhat traits and response should ourfaith in, and faithfulness to God entailin a country that, like the Palestine ofJesus, lives in a colonized context? As apastor for the past 33 years, BishopVera-Mendez explained that answeringthese questions required him to serve asan activist in many initiatives. Some de-manded participation in debates, arrestsand suffering the agony of misunder-standing, while others were filled withdeep satisfaction, respect and recogni-tion for the work done. This lecture wasthe Bishop’s first speaking engagementoutside of Puerto Rico.

You are invited to join us for lecturesheld throughout the academic year.Please visit drew.edu/theological/continuing-education/lectures for an up-to-date listing and schedule.

by Nancy VanderVeenDirector for Continuing Education

Karmen MacKendrick and Elliot R. Wolfson#eld questions after the Halstead Lectureon March 16, 2011.

Bishop Juan Vera-Mendezpreaches from the colonizedcontext of Puerto Rico at theHispanic Latino/a Theologyand Religion Lecture on March 1, 2011.

Evelyn Parker speaks aboutracial stereotypes and youngwomen’s bodies at the NelleMorton Lecture on March 31,2011

Author Robert Corrington (seated)and director/producer SloaneDrayson-Knigge (left) pose withthe cast of 1, 2, 3—an absurdistphilosophical comedy. Theperformance culminated the FirstInternational Congress on EcstaticNaturalism with presenters RobertC. Neville, Wesley Wildman, EdLovely, Sigrí$ur Gu$marsdóttir and many others.

7

THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON

ECSTATIC NATURALISMAPRIL 1-2, 2011 I DREW THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL

TheoSpirit8 FALL 20118

This spring marked Dr. Graybeal’s second retire-ment from the Drew community, who spent

the day on March 23 joyfully revisiting the wis-dom, humor and warmth of all we learned during55 years of searching with him for the belovedcommunity. Dozens more former students leftmessages on the online event guest page to paytribute to his legacy of teaching practical ministriesof hospitality and transformation, especially innon-parish settings. A few of those comments arerecorded here.

“When I got here, the classes were mostlymade up of 20-something, rosy-cheeked boys still living thecollege life,” Dr. Graybeal says. “Now we are getting peoplewith all kinds of life experience, some of them working oneor two jobs while they study, and from all over, includingAfrica and Korea. My students have a lot to teach me.”According to his students, learning from Dr. Graybeal has asmuch to do with who he is as what he knows. Curiosity, con-stant encouragement and an infinite quest for justice are theheart of his gift to them. This summer Dr. and

Mrs. Graybeal resettled in Morristown, Tenn., the rural townwhere they met when Dr. Graybeal was doing research onChristian church life there.

One of the legacies of David and Shirley Graybeal is theGraybeal Prize, awarded to students for use in a ministry thatwill enhance community life. To help endow the prize, con-tact Melissa Fuest, director of Theological Schooladvancement, 973.408.3695.

What have I learned? What are you learning? Is there anything you would do di!erently?

A Tribute to David Graybealby Lydia York, PhD Candidate

“On behalf of all the international stu-dents at Drew I say, “Thank you!” Manyof us could not have received Drew ed-ucations without your compassionateintervention at some point. I still re-member that autumn afternoon in 1986when you took me in your car fromchurch to church encouraging them tosupport me !nancially because I wouldbe “useful to the whole church some-day.”

~ Dr. Obiri Addo T’94

“What to do in the !rst 100 days in anew church: I sat on the front porch and talked with all the neighbors goingby, got to know all the restaurants, allthe things you had told me to do. And I am doing all this with love, as you showed us.”

~ The Rev. Dottie Morris T’03

“You were always as interested in us asyou were in the content of yourcourses.”

~ David and Jane Gregory T’68

It took me a long time to realize that,like the Kingdom of Heaven, the GoodCommunity is here among us andwithin us, even as it is in process of Be-coming. Your quiet generosity, sense ofhumor and willingness to allow stu-dents to explore and discover hasstayed with me and is (on good days) a model in my own ministry and life.

~ Carol Horton T’92

“Your class and you constantly live on inmy work and in me.”

~ Sandra Jenkins T’04

incisive honest questionshumble handssliced sunlit co"eedonut contentmentthoughtful chapel waitingmischievous eyesbreaking professor-student solemnity

~ Adapted from Suzanne DuchesnePhD Candidate

When people I know are stressed outabout a complex situation or a chal-lenging person, I encourage them to actlike my dad, “Pretend you’re an inquisi-tive sociologist: Ask them about theirexperience, why they think the waythey do, what it means to them, how it’sa bene!t to them and is there anythingthey’d do di"erently?” It always seemsto work.

~ Clay Graybeal

9

An associate academic dean must be e#cient,But e#ciency alone is not su#cient.For an AAD to be fully pro!cient,She must also be wholly omniscient. An unomniscient AAD would be sadly de!cient.

As we are about to see,Dr. Yardley has been an all-knowing AAD.And to prove itI call on Alma Tuitt,Dean Yardley’s beloved assistant,Who is positively insistentThat when she is wearyOf query after query—

“I’m ready to take 'Biblical Literature 3',But where in the catalog can it possibly be?”“I’m hoping to graduate in 2013.Will Commencement be sunny or should I plan for rain?”—

The answer that is always bestTo lay every mystery to restIs “Why don’t we ask Dean Yardley?”

“Can I transfer ‘The Spirituality of Golf’ to my MDiv degree?”“Surely. I’ll ask Dean Yardley.”

“When will the next cross-cultural trip toAntarctica be?”“Shortly. Let’s ask Dean Yardley.”

“May one sit at a meeting of the Academic Standing Committee?”“Rarely. But ask Dean Yardley.”

“If the coe#cient of 3 is abc,Is $def > xyz?”“Barely. Better ask Dean Yardley.”

When the serpent aiming to deceiveHad cunningly put the question to Eve, “Can you really not eat the fruit from this tree?”How much happier our fallen world would beHad Eve replied“Hardly. Just ask Dean Yardley.”

A TRibute to Anne Yardleyby Lydia York, PhD Candidate

Ask Dean YardleYby Stephen D. Moore, Professor of New Testament Studies

Ten years of Anne Yardley’s deanshiphave proven that as much harm as red

tape can do in academia, that is how muchgood a good administrator can do.

Simultaneously an advocate for stu-dents and an upholder of standards, DeanYardley somehow discovered the art of balancing tough love and generosity, prac-ticing remarkable efficiency while payingclose attention to the real life realities ofher students. Both helpful and unflap-pable, Dean Yardley is famous for herperpetually open door and round-the-clocklightning-quick email responses. Describedby one student as a reassuring presencewho can get things done, she redefined formany of us the work of care in institu-tional life. In addition to thousands ofsuccessful graduations, Dean Yardley’smost important legacy to her students

might be the witness that administrationcan be a ministry in the creation of ahealthy community.

This is not to mention the scholar-ship, teaching contributions, and passionfor church music that she brought toDrew beginning part time in 1985 andfull time since 1995. Dean Yardley’s combination of “boundless energy andinsistence on living up to her own highstandards,” as Dean Samuels describes, is surely to be missed at Drew. So far, retirement seems to suit her as she con-tinues in her ecclesial commitments andeagerly pursues a long dreamed of tourof U.S. national parks. On April 13, 2011Drew was joined by Dean Yardley’sfamily and the girls’ choir of St. Peter’sEpiscopal Church in Morristown, NJ to celebrate her contributions.

“When I counted on you for assistance, you were always there for me.”

~ Chuck YrigoyenGeneral Secretary, Emeritus UMC

General Commission onArchives and History

“Besides your ability to createmiraculous order out of bureau-cratic chaos and log-jams of demanding, complainingstudents and faculty, you havedone so with grace and humor.”

~ Traci WestProfessor of Ethics and African

American Studies

“From the tiniest detail of aca-demic logistics to the life-sizechanges and challenges that thisseminary journey brings, youhave been a reliable, faithful cen-ter. When the commute or courseload seemed overwhelming, youwere the glue helping to keepthe pieces of my own center in-tact. And just as important tokeeping things together is yourgift of helping things move apart– shifting and sliding into thenext necessary configuration –with your wisdom, guidance,humor and care.”

~ Allison Aylesworth T’09

Peggy Bagnall (Dean Yardley’smother) receives %owers fromProfessor Terry Todd.

Administrative Assistant AlmaTuitt with Dean Yardley

Spring 2011 Visiting Speakers

Macon, Ga. Mayor RobertReichert has a vision for Shalom inhis city. In 2009 he invitedCommunities of Shalom, based atDrew, to offer Shalom Zone Trainingto city and community leaders. Aftersix months of training led by AnnieAllen, coordinator for training andthe intern program, five new Shalomsites were organized and beganworking for transformation in theirneighborhoods. Drew has sentShalom interns to Macon for the pasttwo summers to work with themayor and the sites.

“When I heard about ShalomZones I thought it was a perfect fit.How you ask the neighbors whatthey want and empower the resi-dents to join together. And then youbring municipal government into thepicture to connect the resources,” themayor told a reporter.

This summer, Drew assignedMDiv student Ieisha Hawley-Marion,one of five current shalom interns, tospend 10 weeks in Macon workingwith Shalom Zones out of themayor’s office. “Shalom is the kind ofcommunity outreach where you cantap into the assets of a community,tap into the love of that communityand connect all the groups,” she ex-plained to Drew video-journalist TedJohnsen who did a feature on theMacon Shalom Zones, which airedon the local news and is posted onthe city’s website. “For example, inone of our Shalom Zones there is afamily of 24, which formed when thefour adult parents were incarceratedand all their children were left be-hind to care and raise themselves.Lacking social service assistance,leaders of the Shalom Zone lent theirsupport and help. In this particularneighborhood, over 75 percent of thehomes are abandoned and boardedup, but hope from systemic poverty

to a healthy community is beingbuilt.”

Annie Allen explains why itworks: “Shalom Zones seek to trans-form communities through activeresident participation, community or-ganizing and asset-based communitydevelopment. Using an asset-basedapproach, organizers identify all thegifts and talents within a community,they seek out and highlight the goodin the community and build uponthe strengths instead of focusing onlyon need. Systemic change takes ageneration to achieve, but with sus-tained effort and motivation, we arebeginning to see real change in theCity of Macon, Ga.”

10 FALL 2011

Shalom intern Ieisha Hawley-Marion in Macon, Ga.

TheoSpirit

The Shalom Prophetic Leaders Seriesfeatured Shane Clayborne (above) who

promotes simplicity of lifestyle and a radicalpolitics of caring with Jesus for President,

and Heidi Newmark (below) who embracescommunity organizing as part of her

pastoral work with LGBTQ homeless youth.

by Michael ChristensenNational Director of Shalom

Michael Nausner, T’05 on March 17, 2011

Bishop John Innis preaches onApril 14, 2011

Elisabeth Gerle speaks on March 15,2011 sponsored by the Center for

Christianities in Global Context

Rev. Dr. Bob Edgar, T ’68 speakson March 30, 2011

Rev. Dr. Dohwa Huh, T ’94, T ’96, T ’98celebrates communion on

March 17, 2011

11

A Tribute to Rebecca Lairdby Misty Howick T‘11

On April 26, 2011, the Drew commu-nity gathered to express gratitude for theRev. Dr. Rebecca Laird’s ministries ofwisdom, caring and affirmation in herroles as teacher of pastoral formationand architect of the new certificationprogram in spiritual formation at Drew.She has returned to San Diego, Calif., toserve as associate professor of Christianministry and practice at Point LomaNazarene University, her alma mater.Misty Howick delivered a sermon in herhonor, an excerpt of which follows.

Idon’t know about you, but I canget caught up in what I call my

own world sometimes. I get occu-pied doing schoolwork, churchadministration, trying to stayhealthy for myself. It is during thesetimes that God will nudge me andplace a person in my path who reminds me that my purpose is in-tricately tied to their well being. A word for this is Ubuntu. “I am because you are.” We do not havemeaning without one another. We cannot live into our beloved-ness without loving and caring for

one another.Rev. Laird, Rebecca, you have

touched each one of us by sharingyour life, your experience and yourtruth with us. Because of you, weknow God a little better and weknow ourselves through God a littlemore. You have made us beautifulin the light of God that shines fromyou, and though geographical dis-tance will separate us, we willnever lose sight of that light.Knowing you has changed us andhas given us a new identity and forthat, we thank you.

I am who I am because of whoyou are. And we are who we arebecause of our God, who formedus, who knows us, who loves us.We don’t need brands and labels oreven names to give us meaning. Wehave identity that stretches deeperand wider than the language wehave to describe ourselves. We arebeloved children of God, part of thebody of Christ, intimately entangledwith one another and with theHoly Spirit that resides within eachone of us.

We give thanks for you, Dr. Laird.

From June 21 to 24, 2011, Drewhosted a leadership development seminarfor pastors and lay leaders of Brazilianministries in United States with the theme“Essential Methodist Doctrines.”Promoted by the General Board of HigherEducation and Ministry of The UnitedMethodist Church through theMethodist Global Education Fund, theseminar was coordinated by Dr. Saul J.Espino of the Ordained MinistryDivision of the General Board of HigherEducation and Dr. Vivian Bull of DrewUniversity, assisted by Dr. Luís Wesleyde Souza of the Candler School ofTheology of Emory University.

In addition to fundamental topics ofWesleyan theology and Methodist doc-trines, participants also discussed theneeds of technical and higher educationfor Brazilians living in United States. Amulti-year partnership between the

United Methodist Church General Boardof Global Ministries and UnitedMethodist Church in Brazil has enabledthe development of the Methodist com-munity of Brazilian immigrants in NewJersey and Massachusetts.

UMC Brazilian Pastors

Above: Misty Howick (right) leadsRebecca Laird (left) in embodied prayer.

Below: Dr. Laird poses with her 2010-2011 pastoral formation classes.

12 FALL 2011

Last week as I was doing some er-rands in Morristown, I glancedover at the signboard in front of

the United Methodist Church. It read,as it has read for months, “Jesus lovesyou, and so do we.” I found myselffeeling irritated as I regularly do whenI run into a rather simplistic, formu-laic expression. I thought back on thenumber of times in this chapel when aleader has exhorted us to turn to ourneighbor and say “Jesus loves you,and so do I.” I admit that I often feel abit hypocritical in that moment unlessI happen to be sitting next to someoneI know and care about. (I want to beclear that I’m talking about my recep-tion of this sign—not the congre-gation’s intent and belief in posting it.)

Now before you can say “agape,philia and eros” to me, let me acknowl-edge that I do know that there are dif-ferent Greek words to indicatedifferent types of love—the loves ofpassion, of friendship and of affectionor a self-giving love. So I am not envi-sioning a whole congregation at theMethodist Church feeling passionateabout me or even wanting to be mybest friend. But actually, if I’m honest,I don’t find it comforting or attractiveto think that this whole congregationis full of self-giving love towards me.So why is that? I am not averse at allto being loved. I positively reveled inthe wonderful things that people saidabout me a few weeks ago. I have ap-preciated immensely the prayers andsupport of this community, as well asother friends and family, as I have bat-tled cancer these past few months.

As I wrestled with my uneaseover this simple slogan, I came to real-ize that I want to be loved for the par-ticularity of who I am—not in somegeneric sense. And I want to interactwith others with that same respect forthe distinctiveness of each person. It isprecisely the wonderful quirks andidiosyncrasies of people that make lifeinteresting and compelling to me.Each person who walks into my officehas a different story, a new approach,

and offers me a unique window intohuman experience. And each of us isa work in progress—something I seeso very clearly in the choristers I workwith at church. It is in that very speci-ficity that I find the important humanconnection of love. Or as MartinBuber would put it, “When two peo-ple relate to each other authenticallyand humanly, God is the electricitythat surges between them.” Billboardsdon’t invite me into that authentic relationship.

If I’m honest, I will admit that theGod-spark isn’t always there. Some-times I’m too preoccupied with what-ever else I’m doing and am positivelyannoyed with whoever walks into theoffice. Sometimes, the “Jesus in me”just doesn’t seem to connect with the“Jesus in you.” And on those occa-sions, I am just not feeling love in anyof its forms. And that is probably whyI’m suspicious about that whole con-gregation loving me!

Loving and honoring particulari-ties are precisely what this honorsconvocation is all about. The prizesthat we give out today have been, for the most part, endowed in honorof the specific gifts of a specific personwho has a connection with the school.I love this ceremony because it offersus a very real connection to the people who have walked these hallsbefore us. It does this by lifting up selection criteria that emulate the giftspeople perceive in the person they are honoring. I’d like to share withyou the descriptions of a few of theprizes and the people whose namesthey bear.

One of our newest prizes was es-tablished by the Class of 1956 as their50th-year reunion gift to the school. Itholds up the work of Professor FranzHildebrandt. The description reads,“The Franz Hildebrandt Prize was es-tablished by the Class of 1956 for anoutstanding student who has exempli-fied Dr. Hildebrandt’s qualities bycombining deep faith and excellencein theological studies with effectiveministry as an intern or pastor in afield education assignment leading to

the MDiv degree.” What does theClass of 1956 remember about Dr.Hildebrandt? They remember his deepfaith, his excellence in theology andhis effective ministry. Those are won-derful gifts for students to remember50 years later! Hildebrandt was bornin Berlin in 1909 and died in Edin-burgh in 1985. From 1953 to 1967 he taught Biblical theology at Drew.Drew alumMaxwell Towco-authored abook about himentitled Dr. FranzHildebrandt: Mr.Valiant-For-Truth.The blurb onthat book reads:“Franz Hilde-brandt was Diet-rich Bonhoeffer’s closest friend in the1930s. A remarkable preacher andable scholar, he was a leading figure inthe German Confession Church’sstruggle against the Nazis. As theyoungest signatory of the Baumendeclaration against Nazi doctrine, hewas a marked man. The Bonhoefferfamily aided his flight from Germany,but after 1937 he was never to see hisfriend Dietrich again. Hildebrandtwent to England, where he gatheredaround him many German refugees ina Lutheran congregation in Cam-bridge. Subsequently a Methodistminister, he was professor of theologyat Drew University for 14 years, specializing in the study of Luther and Wesley.”

The Al Haas Prize is “awarded tostudents in the master of divinity de-gree program who have made signifi-cant contributions to the worship lifeof the Theological School and pursuedadvanced coursework in the area ofliturgics.” Alfred Haas lived from 1911to 1987. He received his bachelor ofdivinity degree from Drew in 1937and served on the faculty in the De-partment of Practical Theology from1944 to 1968, becoming chaplain atLycoming College from 1968 to 1971.The Class of 1957 honored him withtheir 50th-anniversary gift. Stan

Prizes and Particularitieshonors conVocation address

By Anne YardleyFormer Associate Academic Dean

TheoSpirit

Shannon Sullivangets the Wickham Prize

13

Menking, former Drew faculty memberand trustee as well as a member of theClass of 1957, comments, “Al had adeep affection for Drew, having been a

student at Drewin addition to the24 years heserved on the fac-ulty. His passionwas for worshipand hymns, hav-ing served as aconsultant for the1964 United

Methodist Hymnal. He was alwaysdeeply interested in the students and ineffect served as an ‘unofficial’ chaplain,supporting, guiding and counselingstudents. In his own cheerful way hecommunicated his commitment to ex-cellence in worship based on a soundtheological understanding of the na-ture of worship. He was friendly andaccessible while at the same time insist-ing on high-quality work from thosewho took his courses. One of Al’s giftswas his ability to prepare his studentsfor what they would be expected to dowhen they went into ministry, and hemodeled an approach to ministry thatset an example for several generationsof students.” How wonderful to havethose particular gifts recognized in the

prize that bears his name.Some of our prizes have emerged

out of tragedy. The Patricia WickhamPrize came to be as a way to honor theparticular gifts of a student who died afew months into her ministry. Four-teen years ago on Memorial Day week-end, Patricia Wickham was riding herbicycle when she was struck and killedby a motorist, who would subsequentlybe charged with her third DUI. SloaneDrayson-Knigge remembers meetingher when she appeared and introducedherself: “Hi, I’m Pat Wickham. I know

nothing about doing theater, but I’m here to work.” Catherine Keller remembers her as “a lovely hauntingperson, such a fine mind, probing carefully into the folds of feminism.”It is the particularity of that fine mindand its interest in feminist scholarshipthat we honor in the prize given in her name.

Each of the prizes has a story andin some way honors particular gifts.Taken in aggregate they represent thegreat “cloud of witnesses” that sur-rounds us here at Drew TheologicalSchool. In my mind, the honors convo-cation is a great celebration of both thepast and present embodiments of manytraits this community honors—goodscholarship in specific areas, pastoralskills, creativity and participation in thelife of the community.

But—and this is a critical caveat—they certainly don’t represent all of thethings that we value. Every year truly

excellent students graduate withoutever having won a prize. Their uniquegifts do not happen to fit one of ourunique prizes even though they em-body something that we care about.We don’t, for example, have a prize foractivism in ecological matters. Perhaps50 years from now the Class of 2011will endow the Laurel Kearns Prize foreco-theological activism and scholar-ship. But I’m afraid we don’t have thatone to give out today! And so it is in-cumbent upon us to find other waysapart from this ceremony to cherishthe gifts that each of us brings to thisenterprise of theological education.Who is the person in your classes who

has most often made you repeat DeanSamuel’s mantra—“don’t judge, won-der”—when they’ve made a statementthat you’ve disagreed with but that hasopened your mind to another way ofthinking? Who is the person who wasquietly there for you when you hit abump in the road? Which faculty col-league’s voice echoes in your mind sothat you can’t make a corporate deci-sion without taking it into account?

“When two people relate to eachother authentically and humanly, Godis the electricity that surges betweenthem.” When that happens here in ourcommunity, let the other person knowhow much that matters to you. Thenperhaps we can sing with integrity,“The Jesus in me loves the Jesus inyou.” I don’t think it is usually “soeasy” to get to that authentic love, butit is definitely worth the effort; and,like the mouse in the poem, we mayjust make the universe take notice.

For more information or to make acontribution to any of the Theo Schoolprizes, please contact Melissa Fuest, directorof Theological School Advancement, 973-408-3695.

Pat Wickham & Joy Witek Amick

Beth Sciainoreceives the Haas Prize

Stephanie Brown &Mary Beth Daniels receive the Hilldebrandt Prize

Al Haas celebrates retiring in 1967

Class of 1956 at Tipple-Vosburgh 2006

Franz Hilldebrandt with students, 1953

Courtesy of University Archives

Courtesy of University Archives

Courtesy of Joy Witek Am

ick

Courtesy of Alumni/ae Relations

14 FALL 2011

One evening in the spring of 1897in Korea, in a tiny and remotevillage of peasants southeast of

what is now Seoul, the capital city, asmall group of people gathered in ahouse—a thatched hut—to perform thecustomary Confucian ritual of honoringthe ancestors. When the food and drinkofferings were set up on a table to facethe wall, where the spirits of the ances-tors were supposed to take a seat, thespiritual leader of the group, 71-year-oldChoe Si-hyeong, whose honorific namewas Haewol, asked the group to reversethe table set-up: “From now on, whenyou perform the ritual, set up the offer-ings to face yourselves.”

For centuries if not millennia, thefood and drink offerings in the ritual ofancestor veneration had always beenmade to the higher spiritual powers fortheir enjoyment, not for the people whoserved them up. When the peoplehelped themselves to the offering, it wasalways after they were graciously in-vited by the spiritual powers to partici-pate in the enjoyment, the invitationbeing the sign of the pleasure and will-ingness of the spiritual powers to blessthe good folk who had just proven theirdevotion and loyalty. Such a structure ofworshipping or honoring higher spiri-tual powers seems to be fairly universal,historically speaking. We can discern itfrom the set-up of temples and altars orthe sequence of worships and ritualsacross cultures and religions. It is there-fore hard to miss the fact that there wasa potent symbolism involved in Hae-wol’s act of reversing or turning upsidedown what was the almost universallyaccepted way of relating to higher spiri-tual powers.

The symbolism becomes even morepotent when we understand the timingof Haewol’s instruction, as indicated bythe way his words began: “From nowon.” When was the “now”? Haewolgave that speech three years after thefirst revolutionary attempt at establish-ing a government of the people, by thepeople, for the people in Korea was de-feated by an imperial, colonial power. In1894, a largely peasant revolutionaryarmy of 100,000, mostly armed with

swords, spears, bows and matchlock orflintlock muskets, marched to the capitalcity, Seoul. At the strategically crucialmountain pass of Ugeumchi, it was metby the combined forces of the ImperialJapanese Army and the client Koreangovernment troops, well entrenched intheir defensive positions and armedwith artillery, Gatling guns and modernhigh-powered rifles. There, after fourdays of bloody battle, their dream of anew world, a new era, died, together

with the short-lived democratic self-government that they had established inthe most populous southwesternprovince under their control. Haewolwas the spiritual leader who had in-spired that dream, while being reluctantto use force to achieve it.

Now on the run and in hiding, inwhat was probably the darkest hour forhimself and his followers—in fact withonly a year left before he was to be cap-tured, tried and executed—Haewoltaught his last teaching, which many inthe West or North Atlantic world mightmisinterpret as a secular-humanistic dis-avowal of higher spiritual powers, butwhich was in fact the spiritual climaxand culmination of the Donghak revolu-tionary dream. To explain what I mean,we need to go back 37 years, to the year1860. In that year, the British andFrench expeditionary forces capturedBeijing, the capital of the neighboring

Chinese empire, after a series of brutalcampaigns, and burnt down the sum-mer palace of the emperor, the Son ofHeaven. It was an event with earth-shaking repercussions in Korea asChina’s model client state within the oldimperial order. The British and theFrench, together with their U.S. andRussian allies, forced various humiliat-ing territorial and trade concessionsupon the Chinese Qing dynasty, includ-ing—significantly—unimpeded Chris-tian missionary activities. In the otherneighboring nation, Japan, the gunboatdiplomacy of the United States hadforced open its doors to the West severalyears earlier and helped it begin aprocess of rapid modernizing, “enlight-ening” transformation, which was toenable Japan to “escape” Asia and tojoin the ranks of the modern imperialpowers. Japan was soon to copycat, atthe Korean port of Incheon, the sametactics taught it by the U.S. navy, forcingits way into the heart of the Koreanpeninsula as the first act of its eventu-ally successful colonizing project. Inter-nally to Korea, the 500-year-old rule ofthe Confucian literati of the Joseon dy-nasty, called yangban, had exhausted thesocially and culturally reforming im-pulses of its beginning, and was losingits once firm grips on the people andtheir everyday way of life, as it faced thewidespread corruption in the govern-ment and the repeated revolt of the ex-ploited mass of peasants. RomanCatholic Christianity had reached theKorean shores many decades earlier andwas spreading its revolutionary messageof the equality of all people before oneGod, called Lord of Heaven (cheonju);yet its Vatican-directed condemnation oftraditional Confucian rituals and cus-toms—such as the ancestor venerationas pagan idolatry and its repeated appealto the intervention of the European im-perial powers—put on Catholic Christi-anity an indelible stamp of being analien threat, leading to brutal persecu-tions that drove it underground.

In such a time of external and in-ternal crises, in a remote village locatedin the southeastern corner of Korea,someone heard God’s voice. That person

TheoSpiritConsecrate the Offerings to Yourselves

Matriculation Address—February 4, 2011by Hyo-Dong Lee

Assistant Professor of Theological Philosophy

Choe Si-hyeong, Master Haewol (honori#c)

15

was Choe Je-u, whose honorific namewas Su-un. Su-un was Haewol’s teacherand spiritual predecessor. He was an ex-Confucian scholar, born of the rulingclass of Confucian literati, but whoseonce illustrious family line had fallen tothe nadir of poverty in his generation.Forced into what was the degrading oc-cupation of trading in and peddlingneedles and yarn, he had travelled allover the country and witnessed the suf-fering of people in a highly tumultuous,confusing and oppressive time, underthe looming threat of foreign imperialpowers and the corrupt and tyrannicalhands of the ruling elites. To find an an-swer to the spiritual and social ills of histime, Su-un had returned to his home-town, secluded himself in a mountaincave, a Buddhist place of retreat, andstarted to pray fervently to the highestspiritual power yet unknown to him.After a year of spiritual wrestling, pray-ing for 49 days at a time like a devoutBuddhist, he finally had a life-changingencounter with haneullim or Lord ofHeaven, whose teaching he initiallythought was the Christian teaching,only to be immediately corrected by theLord of Heaven. In the wake of that en-counter, Su-un started to proclaim anew teaching (i.e., a new way or do(dao)) which promised a new age ofpeace and harmony and which heclaimed to encompass the traditionalteachings of Confucianism, Buddismand Daoism. He named the new teach-ing Donghak, or Eastern Learning, in aself-conscious attempt at providing arevolutionary yet non-alien, indigenousalternative to what he considered wasthe inadequate, if not entirely false,teachings of Western Learning (i.e.,Christianity).

Su-un’s new teaching consisted in asimple truth: All of us were bearers ofthe Lord of Heaven. The core tenet ofhis teachings that enabled him to makethat claim was the notion of gi or qi(i.e., the notion of vital cosmic energy),which is part of the commonly sharedcosmology among North East Asian cul-tures even today. The vital cosmic en-ergy, it is said, has two modalities of yinand yang, or receptive and active,whose dynamic combination and con-stant turning into each other constitutethe creative-transformative processes ofthe universe that give birth to all things.In this worldview there is nothing thatis not the vital cosmic energy, for thatenergy is both mind and body, ideal andmaterial and spiritual and natural. Su-un made this notion of vital cosmic en-

ergy the crucial connecting link be-tween the Lord of Heaven and humanbeings, when he went a step further tospeak of the Lord of Heaven as jigi orUltimate Energy.

By Ultimate Energy, he meant thecosmic energy in its primordial and ulti-mate form, being mysterious, indescrib-able, ineffable, beyond existence andnon-existence, yet all-encompassingand omnipresent as the ground of beingand becoming, as the dynamic creativityat the root of all things, and as thewomb filled with chaotic waters fromwhich the myriad creatures were born.Su-un taught his followers a regimen ofbodily and meditational practices to cul-tivate and rectify their vital energy inthe attitude of sincerity, reverence andtrust. And at the core of this practice laythe recitation of the devotional incanta-tion that we all read today.1 Byearnestly desiring and praying to be

united with the Ultimate Energy, peoplecould come to be aware of the intimateconnection between their own vital en-ergy and the Ultimate Energy becausethe Ultimate Energy within them wouldspeak to them as a personal deity, as theLord of Heaven, and tell them the fol-lowing earth-shaking truth: “My heart-and-mind is no other than yourheart-and-mind.” Humanity isHeaven—this short sentence becamethe principal motto of the Donghakmovement.

When one of his disciples asked aquestion about the difference betweenhis teachings and Western Learning orChristianity, Su-un’s answer was telling:Christians (or Westerners), he re-marked, did not have in their bodies“the spirit of the harmonious becomingof the vital energy.” He explained whathe meant as follows: Western Learningor Christianity lacked an understandingof the vital and intimate connection be-tween God and humanity, betweenhuman beings and between human andnon-human creatures. As a result West-ern Learning excelled in the productionof inauspicious death-dealing technolo-

gies and violent instruments of domina-tion, as proven by the formidable arma-ments of the Western imperial powers,while at the same time promoting theselfish pursuit of individual salvationfrom this oppressive world by imagininga heavenly world where the Lord ofHeaven was believed to dwell and towhich people needed to go after deathin order to be saved.

What Su-un envisioned as his taskwas to create a community of God-bearers who were all equal to one an-other, here and now. As one of his firstacts after his awakening to the truth, heemancipated his two female bond ser-vants, adopted one as his daughter andtook the other in as his daughter-in-law—something virtually unthinkablefor a person of his lineage. And as agrowing number of people of diversebackgrounds gathered around him, heselected Haewol, who was a lowly sonof poor peasants and nearly illiterate, ashis spiritual successor. When Su-un wasarrested and executed for alleged acts oftreason after merely three years of“public ministry,” even after his disci-ples were all scattered to the four windsand the community dissipated, Haewoldid not disappoint his teacher. For threedecades, as a hunted man constantly onthe run, Haewol carried the torch, keptalive Su-un’s teaching, rebuilt the com-munity person by person, gathered themanuscripts of Su-un’s writings to printthe Donghak scriptures, propagated thegood news that every human being em-bodied the Lord of Heaven and at-tracted an ever-increasing multitude ofpeople downtrodden and oppressed formillennia, by giving them a sense ofdignity as God-bearers and the hope fora new world in which none was to betreated as a non-person just because heor she happened to be born as a peas-ant, a slave or a woman—a new worldin which even an animal, a bird or asingle blade of grass would be honoredand respected as an embodiment of thehighest spiritual power.

The passages we have read fromthe Donghak scriptures today give us aglimpse of that new world;2 and I willread one more:

The teacher said, “The Lord ofHeaven relies on humans and humansrely on food. To be intimately attunedto all beings is simply a matter of eatinga bowl of rice…. Therefore, feed theLord of Heaven by means of the Lord ofHeaven, and serve the Lord of Heavenby means of the Lord of Heaven.”

(continued on page 16)

�“My heart-and-mind is no other than your

heart-and-mind. Humanity isHeaven.�”

16 FALL 2011

If the Lord of Heaven is embodiedin every being, including ourselves andeven in the very food that we are con-suming to nourish ourselves, then wecould even say that we are feeding andnourishing the Lord of Heaven bymeans of the Lord of Heaven in thesimple act of sharing a bowl of rice or aloaf of bread. Then, we can perhaps un-derstand why Haewol’s last instruc-tion—“From now on, set up theofferings for yourselves”—was the cli-max and culmination of the subversivedream of the multitude, who had ac-cepted the way of the Lord of Heavenproclaimed by Su-un and Haewol, andwhose vital energy had powerfully ir-rupted in the revolutionary resistanceof 1894. By consecrating the food anddrink offerings to ourselves—by return-ing the fruit of the labor of the unholy,ignoble, subjugated and colonized mul-titude to the multitude themselves—wewould be resisting the forces that try tosever the vital link of cosmic energy be-tween heaven and earth, the holy andthe unholy, the noble and the base,male and female, the ruler and theruled, the colonizer and the colonized.We would be re-establishing the freecirculation of the vital cosmic energy inthe entire oikoumene, the whole inhab-ited earth, without the artificial obstruc-tion and excessive concentration of thatcosmic energy in the hands of just a fewor even one. By doing so, we would besounding the death knell of God as aperfectly transcendent monarch—thevery God whom Su-un criticized as de-void of the harmonious becoming of thevital cosmic energy.

Today’s readings from the Bible areall about spirit.3 “God is Spirit,” one ofthe readings declares. We, as spirits, arebodily temples of God’s Spirit, we aretold. There seems to be a connectinglink (i.e., a mediation by spirit) betweenGod and creatures, between the holyand the unholy, between the noble andthe base, in the Good News of JesusChrist, which the apostle Paul pro-claims. Su-un might have rethought hiscriticism of Western Learning, had hehad in his possession Paul’s letters,though he may still have disputed thevitality and thoroughness of the Chris-tian version of God-bearing. Today’sBible readings tell us further that theSpirit of God indwells us in Christ as thesign of our adoption to be heirs of thenew world, the reign of God, in whichthe whole creation will obtain the free-

dom of the glory of the children of God.Haewol would be sympathetic to such avision, provided that the heirs do notforever remain mere heirs or inherit thenew world merely as retainers in theimperial court of the Christ the CrownPrince, the true heir. Neither Su-un norHaewol had access to the Bible. Whatthey likely had access to was only awidely circulated Catholic doctrinal andapologetic treatise written by MatteoRicci, the famous Jesuit missionary toChina. The treatise was called “The TrueMeaning of the Lord of Heaven”—oneLord of Heaven, but two differentteachings, one from the West, the other from the East.

The year in which Haewol taughthis last teaching, the year 1897, saw thededication of the first Korean Methodistchurch, Jeongdong Church, built byHenry Appenzeller, a Drew graduateand the first Methodist missionary inKorea. I wish Appenzeller had met Hae-wol in one of his many tours through-out the country, traveling on foot, bybicycle and on horseback. I wish he hadgiven Haewol a draft of the Koreantranslation of the New Testament onwhich he was working, in exchange fora copy of the Great Scripture of EasternLearning. I wish Appenzeller, who hadwanted not only to Christianize Koreabut also to modernize it after the modelof American style democracy and capi-talism—I wish he had had a chance towitness with his own eyes the very firstattempt at a democratic revolution frombottom up in Korean history, evenwithout the one crucial ingredient that the grand narrative of Westernmodernity requires for such a thing to happen—the presence of an “enlight-ened,” modern, bourgeois middle class,as had been the case in Great Britain or France.

Had such encounters taken place,the history of Christianity in Koreamight have taken a slightly differentcourse. “Appenzeller found Korea inpagan barbarism,” wrote one of his bi-ographers. Korea was for him “an in-hospitable hermit kingdom, the abodeof cruelty, oppression, mental darkness,ignorance and disease.”4 What Appen-zeller saw in Korea largely was thegreedy, corrupt and tyrannical rule ofthe Confucian elites on the one handand the ignorant, superstitious andcompletely victimized and passive pop-ulace on the other. For him, therefore,the only hope for the suffering peopleof Korea, whom he genuinely loved,was the shining beacon of ProtestantChristianity and the enlightening bene-fits of Western modernity it afforded. Itwas apparently beyond the realm ofpossibility for him that these haplesspeople, mired in darkness, misery andabject poverty, could rise up to becomethe subjects and agents of their history.Otherwise, it is hard to understand howAppenzeller and the other Western mis-sionaries almost completely failed tonotice the true significance of the titanicstruggle taking place right before theireyes—the struggle that was to decidethe future of the land that they so lovedas to give up their own lives for it.

Nonetheless, it’s not all about whatmight have been. The arrival of manyforms of Anglo-European Christianitywas certainly good news to the Koreanpeople, for they not only provided ac-cess to the benefits of modern science,medicine and education, but also har-bored within themselves, despite all thebaggage of imperialism they carried, thepotential to offer a different yet kindredvision of a new world—Jesus’ vision ofthe reign of God—after the crushing ofthe Donghak revolutionary dream. Thenew world of Donghak, had it been re-alized, would have needed them andwelcomed them. What needs still totake place, rather, is an honest dialoguebetween equals, a conversation be-tween present-day Appenzellers andpresent-day Haewols, both men andwomen, for they have much to learnfrom each other. And that ought to betrue in every corner of the world today,if Christianity is to become World Christianities, not one World Christian-ity, with battles yet to fight over the question of where to locate its imperial center.

(continued from page 15)

Dr. Hyo-Dong Lee delivers the springmatriculation address.

(notes continued on page 19)

TheoSpirit

17

Former Drew professor andrenowned scholar of Dietrich BonhoefferJohn Drew Godsey died of cardiac arrestin Gaithersburg, Md., on Oct. 12, 2010.His first year as a Drew theological stu-dent in 1950, John recalls blossomingunder the impact of the thinkers andteachers he encountered. As he reflectedin 1990, “Drew opened up a whole newworld for me, and after that first year [mywife] Emalee said she had never seen meso happy. I knew I had finally found mytrue calling!” At the urging of the faculty,he moved his young family toSwitzerland to pursue a ThD under KarlBarth, finishing insigni cum laude. Hispublished dissertation, The Theology ofDietrich Bonhoeffer, was the first compre-hensive study of Bonhoeffer in any

language. He returned to DrewTheological School as well as the graduate school in 1956 to teach and administrate for 12 years, first with and then in place of his mentor, CarlMichalson. As professor of systematictheology, he taught the history ofProtestant thought, Bonhoeffer, Barth,Schleiermacher and dialectical theology.In 1964 he was awarded a Fulbright

Research Fellowship and spent a sabbati-cal year at the University of Goettingen,Germany. In 1968 after protracted con-troversy between the university boardand the Theological School, culminatingwith the firing of Dean Charles Ranson,Dr. Godsey left Drew along with many ofhis colleagues. Fortunately, WesleyTheological Seminary in Washington,D.C., had made an offer two years before,which he’d initially declined out of loyalty to Drew. He remained at Wesleyuntil officially retiring in 1988. In 1995,Dr. Godsey received Drew UniversityTheological School’s DistinguishedService Award. Dr. Godsey authored andco-authored numerous books and otherscholarly works, including EthicalResponsibility: Bonhoeffer’s Legacy to theChurches, and was a founding member ofthe International Bonhoeffer Society,English Language Section; a past presi-dent of the American Theological Society;and active in the American Academy ofReligion, the Biblical Theologians and theKarl Barth Society of North America.

In MemoriamJohn Drew Godsey

T’53

by Lydia YorkPhD Candidate

Scent of Korea - March 3, 2011Circa 1956, courtesy of U

niversity Archives

At Drew University, we call our ap-proach to education “lifelong

learning”—Drew conception, EsquireHolland’s reality. After a very successfulcareer as an attorney, Esquire was calledto pursue theological education, a jour-ney with an uncertain path anddestination, but one she was compelledto follow. For Esquire, this was not sim-ply a process of acquiring knowledge; itwas a journey towards gaining under-standing, a relational process of deepconversations, discussions, calling intoquestion our assumptions of who wethought we were at Drew and who weactually are at Drew.

She made me rethink my role aspastor, chaplain, teacher, worship leader.Her approach to learning pushed manyof us to reconsider what we looked likeand felt like and how we communicated

in the chapel and in the classroom.In the brief time, just over two

years, that Esquire was part of the Drewcommunity, she certainly impacted ourcampus life, our academic world. Shestrengthened and brought new energy toSpectrum, our GLBTQI organization, andreached out to young college students inneed of people to dialogue with otherswho had, like herself, explored who theyare and who they might become.

Her big smile, her larger-than-lifepresence.

Some of us mourn the notion that

Esquire’s journey ended too soon—that itwas abbreviated and left unfinished onAugust 9, 2011 due to myeloma relatedillness. I dare to say that Esquire was sofully engaged and had achieved so muchbecause with each step on the path,Esquire took giant leaps of faith and risk.Esquire never failed to ask the hard questions and was always willing to engage in difficult conversations, which could be had because she alwaysapproached them in a spirit of authen-ticity and trust. She never passed up anopportunity to be in relationship or to trysomething new.

One of my favorite quotes hangs onmy office wall as a reminder to me. It’swritten by Holocaust victim Anne Frank,and it reads: “How wonderful it is thatnobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

I am grateful for Esquire’s livingamong us, and in her leaving us physi-cally, she leaves with us thisinspiration—that we need not waste asingle moment in building relationships,exploring and learning and asking thequestions no one else wants to speak outloud. May it be so.

TheoSpirit18 FALL 2011

In Memoriam

Esquire HollandMDiv Student

by Tanya Lynn BennettUniversity Chaplain,

Director of the Chapel & Religious Life

For a woman whose father refused tolet her go to college, Rita Bermingham

eventually arranged the sweetest revenge:She earned a baccalaureate degree andtwo advanced degrees, and forged a ca-reer in academia among people and ideasshe cared for so deeply. A brief illnesstook Rita Bermingham’s life on March 20,2011, but not before she had made Drewcolleagues and Drew alumni members ofher family away from home.

Rita Bermingham attended to Drewalumni as few others have, beginning asan administrative assistant under AlumniDirector Bob Sturtivant in 1978 when shereturned to work once her daughter

started college. Rita stayed until 2009when she retired as assistant director ofalumni relations after decades of assistingwith CLA reunions, editing classnotes, or-ganizing Theological School reunions,traveling to United Methodist AnnualConferences for alumni gatherings andserving as travel agent for university toursto the canals of Brugge, the Holy Land,Mexico, North and South America, Russiaand eastern and western Europe.

“She was a caregiver,” said the Rev.Dr. Bruce Grob C’73, G’84, another for-mer alumni director for whom Ritaworked. “She was welcoming. She em-braced and practiced hospitality. She wasvery real in a setting and a job that oftenasked us ‘to put on a face’ that wouldplease or encourage or invite others togive or to get involved. Rita did all thosethings, but it was never a matter of pre-tending. It was just Rita. She embracedand practiced hospitality.”

Her greatest love at Drew was the seminary. After being named the alumni office’s liaison to the Theological School, the devout Roman Catholic was determined to learn about the United Methodist Church andits doctrines and enrolled in the master oftheological studies program. As a resultshe came to know the school, its studentsand its alumni as few outsiders ever do.She also earned a master of letters fromthe Caspersen School of GraduateStudies, becoming one of only a handfulof alumni to have earned degrees from allthree of Drew’s schools. And she neverstopped welcoming her fellow alumni.

Rita BerminghamC’90, G’92, T’97

by Rosemarie Collingwood-ColeG’00, P’00

19

1 “Recognizing that Ultimate Energy is all aroundme here and now, I pray to be one with it. I embodythe Lord of Heaven; and the divine work of harmo-nious becoming is being established in me. If I neverforget the divine presence within, I will become inti-mately attuned to all.” (Donggyeong Daejeon [TheGreat Scripture of Eastern Learning])

2 At Seo Taek-sun’s house, the teacher (i.e., Hae-wol) heard the sound of Taek-sun’s daughter-in-lawweaving. He asked Taek-sun, “Who is weaving”?Taek-sun answered, “It’s my daughter-in law.” Heasked again, “Is it really your daughter-in-law weav-ing?” Taek-sun did not understand. The teacher said,“When someone visits you, do not say so-and-so hascome for a visit, but say the Lord of Heaven has come.”

“What fills the entire universe is the one vital en-ergy of chaotic beginning. Refrain, therefore, from tak-ing even a single step lightly. One day as I was resting,a child ran across the yard in front of me wearing apair of wooden sandals. Alarmed by the tremor of theearth caused by the sound, I stood up, massaging mychest, and said, “My chest hurts, because of the soundof the wooden sandals.” Cherish the earth like the fleshof your own mother.” (Haewol Sinsa Beopseol [TheSermons of Haewol the Divine Teacher])

3 Romans 8:9–17; John 4:24; 1 Cor 3:164 William Elliot Griffis, A Modern Pioneer in

Korea: The Life Story of Henry G. Appenzeller (NewYork; Chicago; Toronto; London; Edinburgh: FlemingH. Revell Company, 1912), 7

(notes continued from page 16)

TheoSpirit20 FALL 201120

withFernando Segovia Cheryl Kirk-Duggan Benny Liew Kenneth NgwaandKah-Jin Je"rey Kuan

What does it mean to read a global Bible? What new exegetical vistas await us?

The Global Bible: How People and Place Matter

Tipple-Vosburgh Lecture

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HummelDist. Corp.

Drew University Theological School36 Madison AvenueMadison, NJ 07940

TheoSpirit

October 18–20, 2011

Find

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Seminary SaturdaysOctober 8, 2011

November 5, 2011December 3, 2011

Fall 2011 Webinar Series“Work and Meaning

in Ministry”November 7, 14, 21, 2011

Classes Without QuizesSeptember 30, 2011

“Bullying: Ministerial Perspectives and Congregational Action”

October 30, 2011 “Cognitive Psychology in a Church Context”

November 18, 2011 “Worship for a Digital Culture”

We invite you!

For more information, event schedules andonline registration, please visit

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