School Notes: Yale Divinity School
January/February 2008

YDS scholars welcome statement by Muslims

In mid-October, four Yale Divinity School scholars, including the dean and the president-elect of the American Academy of Religion, released a statement warmly embracing the open letter "A Common Word between Us and You," issued worldwide on October 11 and signed by 138 Muslim scholars, clerics, and intellectuals. The statement from the YDS scholars, entitled "Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to 'A Common Word between Us and You,'" reads, "We receive 'A Common Word' as a Muslim hand of conviviality and cooperation extended to Christians worldwide. In this response we extend our own Christian hand in return, so that together with all other human beings we may live in peace and justice as we seek to love God and our neighbors." Issuing the statement were Dean Harold Attridge; Miroslav Volf, director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture; Joseph Cumming, director of the Reconciliation Program at the Yale Center for Faith & Culture; and Emilie M. Townes, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of African American Religion and Theology and president-elect of the American Academy of Religion. As the "Loving God and Neighbor" statement was circulated beyond Yale, more than 200 Christian church leaders and theologians signed on within one month, including the dean of Harvard Divinity School and the president of Princeton Theological Seminary.

Over $3 million in pledges to boost financial aid at Divinity School

Yale Divinity School announced more than $3 million in capital campaign gifts during the week of Alumni Convocation and Reunions, October 8-11, including two gifts of $1 million -- one in honor of former Yale University chaplain Sidney Lovett -- and two of $500,000. Dean Harold Attridge said, "These most generous contributions to Yale Divinity School will provide significant support where it is most needed -- scholarship aid to students. The gifts reflect the fondness for YDS that so many of our alumni feel and that was much in evidence at Convocation and Reunions 2007. I am most grateful for these gifts, and my wife, Jan, and I are happy to have joined in donating to YDS and in naming YDS a beneficiary in our own wills."

Alumni Convocation and Reunions 2007: worship, dining, lectures . . . and homework

This year's Convocation and Reunions was the best-attended in recent memory, with a total of 406 registered participants. They worshipped together, dined together, and heard a number of stimulating lectures. But many alumni came away with something more than memories and inspiration -- homework. Two special projects were introduced during the week, both aimed at collecting and disseminating the considerable experience alumni have gathered over the years, in order to make that experience accessible to others. Describing the "Legacy Project" for the classes of 1961, 1962, and 1963, Bruce Rigdon ’62BD, ’68PhD, said, "My friends, I think we must have learned something after these 45 years of ministry. I really mean that. I think together we have stories to tell, wonderful stories and tragic stories, and in those stories there are some terribly valuable lessons."

Meanwhile, leaders of the new Initiative on Religion and Politics at Yale described plans to harvest the insights and recollections of alumni from a more specific terrain -- the social justice arena. "Many of you have spent your careers, or are working now, on important issues of social justice," said Emilie Townes, an organizer of the initiative and the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of African American Religion and Theology. "We don't want to go too far without your input."

And now there are two . . .

In the stately YDS Common Room -- adorned with portraits of iconic YDS figures such as Roland Bainton, H. Richard Niebuhr, and Liston Pope -- the female presence has doubled. The latest portrait to be hung is that of Letty M. Russell, a leading feminist theologian who was on the YDS faculty from 1974 to 2001 and who died in July at the age of 77. She now joins Joan Forsberg, former associate dean of students at YDS, becoming just the second woman in the galaxy of luminaries honored in the Common Room. The Russell portrait was formally hung on October 23, following a memorial service in her honor in Marquand Chapel. Painted by artist Gerald P. York ’81, the portrait was commissioned in part through the support of Janet W. Tanner ’98MAR.