Alumni News
Reverend R. Preston Price (STH’70) Awarded Distinguished Clergy at the California-Pacific Conference
The California-Pacific Conference is a regional body of The United Methodist Church, made up of some 50,000 members in almost 350 local churches throughout Southern California, parts of Central California, Hawaii, the Pacific Islands, Guam and Saipan.
Every year, the Bishop, Grant Hagiya, awards eight distinguished persons (four clergy and four laypersons) who devoted their life of extraordinary service to the California-Pacific Conference. STH alum Reverend R. Preston Price (STH'70) receives this year's award.
Rev. R. Preston Price has been married to Jean Price for 54 years. Jean is retired from teaching and being a professional organist. They have two sons. Robert is Dean of the Episcopal Cathedral in Dallas; John is Superintendent of Schools in the city of North Chicago. The family includes two wonderful daughters-in-law and five grandchildren.
BUSTH Alum Christina Rathbone (STH’09) Has Helped People Excluded from Society Share Their Stories
This article was originally published in focus magazine, the annual scholarly publication of the BU School of Theology, in May 2021. The full magazine is posted here and this article can be found on page 27.
On the Margins: As a Reporter, then a Priest, Christina Rathbone (STH'09) Has Helped People Excluded from Society Share Their Stories
By Andrew Thurston
Cristina Rathbone doesn’t normally wear a clerical collar, but the asylum seekers at the US border needed all the help they could get. If her collar helped nudge a border agent into waving them across, it was worth the effort.
A priest in the Episcopal Church in Boston, Rathbone (’09) spent six months in 2019 working with asylum seekers fleeing violence and persecution in Central America and hoping for sanctuary in the United States. Like many of the people she met, Rathbone ended up in Juárez. The northern Mexican city sits shoulder to shoulder with El Paso, Texas—border cities split by the Rio Grande, but tied together by four bridges that carry thousands of migrants every year.
“I would put my collar on only to go up to the checkpoint and seek to lend a bit of my privilege as a US citizen and an ordained member of the clergy,” says Rathbone, “to try to encourage border patrol to uphold the laws as they stand—that anybody asking for asylum should be allowed straight into the country to pursue that case.” Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.
In recent years, it’s become harder than ever to claim shelter in the United States. During his four years in office, former President Donald Trump consistently reduced the cap on the number of refugees the country would admit. In October 2020, he set the limit at just 15,000; in 2016, the US had welcomed 85,000. According to the Washington Post, the courts have a backlog of more than 1 million pending asylum claims. “My mother’s Cuban,” says Rathbone, “so I have always had a particular interest in stories of immigration, especially from Latin America.”
In the Heart of Suffering
Born in America, Rathbone spent her formative years in the United Kingdom—her father’s homeland—before returning to the States for college. After starting, but not finishing, a degree in documentary filmmaking in New York, Rathbone became an investigative journalist, publishing articles in a range of papers and magazines, including the Miami Herald and the New York Daily News. It wasn’t until she was in her forties that she switched paths and joined the church. “The kind of journalist I was and the kind of priest I am are so similar,” says Rathbone. The people Rathbone wrote about— particularly in her two books, On the Outside Looking in: Stories from an Inner-City High School and A World Apart: Women, Prison, and Life Behind Bars—were on society’s frayed edges. “My home lay out on the margins,” she says.
“The homeless folks in Boston taught me everything I know about how to pastor to people even as they are in the heart of suffering. They taught me that mostly all I really need to do is listen and learn, and then I’ll be given the skills that I need, as I need them, from the community on the ground.”
It still does. After studying theology at STH, Rathbone joined the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston, serving as a canon missioner and pastor to people experiencing homelessness. “The homeless folks in Boston taught me everything I know about how to pastor to people even as they are in the heart of suffering,” she says. “They taught me that mostly all I really need to do is listen and learn, and then I’ll be given the skills that I need, as I need them, from the community on the ground.”
On the Border
When Rathbone arrived in Juárez in August 2019, she joined with the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande in El Paso to do what she describes as small things: provide water, food, blankets, and clothing; later, she helped start a class for children and began walking with families to the border.
“I’m a great believer in small things,” says Rathbone. “Once we get sidetracked by trying to create big things, we spend more time thinking about the big thing than the actual work the big thing is supposed to contain and represent. “Having said that, it’s really hard doing small things in the face of such dire and multiple suffering.”
She says the resilience of the people she met—groups of moms and kids who’d banded together for the journey, parents whose children had been tortured and murdered by narcos—“enlarged and transformed my heart.” But caring for them required caring for herself too. Rathbone says she relied on encouragement— spiritual and financial—from the institutional church, as well as from friends and family. “When one’s operating very much out on the edge of things,” says Rathbone, “it becomes very important, at least for me, to feel tethered to the center.”
In November 2020, Rathbone started a new program to train and guide others in the church who want to help those seeking safe harbor in the United States. Neighbor to Neighbor connects asylum seekers with local Episcopal churches to help them adjust to life in the country. “I went to the border thinking it was the place where I needed to be in order to be of the most use in this immigration quagmire,” says Rathbone, who is leading the organization in collaboration with Episcopal Migration Ministries. “I’ve realized that the border is everywhere in this country already: people who cross the border go to literally every town and city. We can be of service wherever we are.”
Having spent so much of her life hearing and telling the stories of those excluded from society, Rathbone hopes Neighbor to Neighbor—which launched in the Episcopal Dioceses of Massachusetts, Southeast Florida, the Rio Grande, and New Jersey—will enable others in the church to spend more time with them too.
“We, the church, need to be in relationship with the people who are most suffering, because they have the most to teach us about love.”
“We, the church, need to be in relationship with the people who are most suffering, because they have the most to teach us about love,” she says. “Those of us in the church tend to be particularly good at pretending we’re not broken. Being with people who can no longer pretend liberates us to confess our own brokenness; once we do that, the healing has already begun.”
Dr. Arvid W. Adell (GRS’70, STH’70)
This obituary was originally published at Olson Funeral and Cremation Services.
Arvid W. Adell, 85, of Roscoe, died on Thursday, May 13, 2021. Born September 30, 1935, in Osage City, KS, the son of Arvid and Vivian (Udd) Adell. Arvid married Karen Akerlund on November 24, 1961 in Rockford. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Augustana and his PhD in Philosophy from Boston University. He was also a graduate of North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago and attended a year of Seminary school at the University of Edinburgh. Arvid completed his Seminary internship at Bethesda Covenant Church in Rockford. Arvid was the chairman of the Philosophy Department at Millikin University where he coached basketball and golf before his full retirement in 2013 and the Pastor of Bethlehem Presbyterian Church in Decatur, IL until 2000. He also taught Business Ethics at Carnegie Mellon University, Qatar Campus in 2008. He attended First Congregational Church in Beloit, WI. He was a published writer and avid reader. Arvid enjoyed to bike, hike, and travel and was an avid golfer who occasionally tee’d it up in the fairway. As a trumpeter and singer himself, he had a passion for music.
Survived by his wife, Karen; children, Jani (Mark) Duffy of Scottsdale, AZ, Diane (Kendall) Boone of Rockford, and Mike (Deanna) Adell of Lemont, IL; grandchildren, Nils, Annika, Marta, Lauren, and Lizzy; sister, Eileen Thorpe of Chicago; brother, Rev. Willis (Mona) Adell of Seattle, WA; and sister-in-law, Beverly Adell of Sterling, IL. Predeceased by his parents; brother, Wallis Adell; and brother-in-law, Dr. Roger Thorpe. The family would like to thank the staff at Swedish American Hospital, PEAK Medical Home Care, Northern Illinois Hospice and many others for their care.
A memorial visitation will be from 4:00 to 6:00 on Thursday, May 20, 2021 at Olson’s North Main Chapel, 2811 North Main St., Rockford. Private family burial in Scandinavian Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, the family prefers memorials made to Doctors without Borders USA, PO BOX 5030, Hagerstown, MD 21741-5030 / www.doctorswithoutborders.org
BUSTH PhD Student Shaunesse’ A. Jacobs Awarded Rappaport Summer Public Policy Fellowship
June 4, 2021 – Boston University School of Theology PhD student in constructive theology and ethics Shaunesse' A. Jacobs has been named a Rappaport Public Policy Fellow by Harvard’s Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. Ms. Jacobs is one of 20 selected fellows out of a field of nearly 200 applicants from nearby institutions, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston College, and Harvard Medical School. She will spend this summer working in Massachusetts government agencies and meeting with other Rappaport fellows to discuss key issues in the Massachusetts region, including public policy and implementation. Her fellowship will focus on creating a bridge curriculum between home health aides and certified nursing assistants, and the resulting research will inform a policy strategy to increase entry into nursing professions.
For a full list of fellows, please visit the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston.
A Funny Thing Happened While Researching Algorithms
Carrington Moore (STH'14) signed up for a dating app to better understand user preferences for a start-up business. Then he came across Schnelle Shelby’s profile.
This article was originally published by The New York Times, on May 27 2021, by Tammy La Gorce. It can be found here.
Carrington Moore never liked the idea of online dating. In the summer of 2014, though, joining Match all of a sudden became a professional obligation.
Mr. Moore, 34, of Cambridge, Mass., was starting a business, Go Break Bread, with a pair of friends that year. Liftoff of the project, meant to be like Meetup except for building religious communities online, depended on them getting a grip on how algorithms work. “We had figured out that dating apps were the best place to research algorithms, but one of my friends was in a relationship, and the other one was like, ‘I’m married,’” he said. Mr. Moore, being single, was singled out. “They were like, ‘Carrington, you’ve got to do it.’”
But his mission to research, and research only, was thwarted instantly when Schnelle Shelby’s picture popped up. “Schnelle came up wearing this zebra print dress,” he said. “She seemed really interesting and really pretty. I stalked her for like 30 minutes.”
Baptist News Global names STH student Laura Ellis (STH’21) as Clemons Fellows
This article was originally published by the Baptist News Global, on May 19, 2021, and the full press release can be found here.
Laura Ellis and Rick Pidcock have been named BNG’s first Clemons Fellows and will serve 10 weeks this summer in a structured program of writing, dialogue and reflection. They will learn in weekly seminars with other notable writers in the religion market while also researching and writing in a variety of styles for BNG.
Ellis is a spring graduate of Boston University School of Theology, where she has been a writing fellow in the Educational Resource Center while working on a master of divinity degree. She previously served as a writer in Bali, Indonesia, through the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s Global Missions program.
Rebecca Hardcastle Wright, Ph.D. (STH’76) published “Exoconscious Humans: Will Free Will Survive in an Increasingly Non-Human World?”
Exoconscious Humans: Will Free Will Survive in an Increasingly Non-Human World? by Rebecca Hardcastle Wright, Ph.D., examines a future that includes public disclosure of UFOs and extraterrestrials within advancing non-human artificial reality.
Hardcastle Wright emphasizes Exoconsciousness, an ancient and innate human ability to connect, communicate, and co-create with extraterrestrials and multidimensional beings.
As founder and director of the nonprofit Institute for Exoconsciousness, I-EXO, she participates in an international community of contactees who interact with off-world beings, resulting in heightened psychic intelligence and cosmic consciousness. Their Exoconscious psychic experience creates an expansion of human identity and abilities.
Hardcastle Wright’s book contrasts the natural psychic intelligence of Exoconscious Humans with Transhumans' engineered biology and artificial intelligence and proposes common ground.
Humans face imminent decisions about the advancement of their species. Will humans freely claim natural Exoconsciousness or accede to engineered transhumanism? Hardcastle Wright
presents an even-handed analysis, exploring alternatives and possible common ground to
navigate the reality of UFOs, ETs, and Transhumans.
Click here to purchase your copy of Exoconscious Humans: Will Free Will Survive in an Increasingly Non-Human World? on Amazon. Watch Book Trailer here.
UMC Deacons at 25: Picking up on an Old Conversation
This article was originally published by UM & Global, written by Deacon Benjamin L. Hartley and Deacon Paul E. Van Buren on May 17, 2021, and the full blog post can be found here.
Benjamin L. Hartley is a deacon in the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference and is living in Seattle, Washington. In the fall, he will be joining the Seattle Pacific University School of Theology as an Associate Professor of Mission and World Christianity. He writes occasional blog posts at https://missionandmethodism.net/blog/
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Order of Deacon, Deacon Benjamin L. Hartley and Deacon Paul E. Van Buren had a conversation about the book, the progress of the UMC diaconate, and their hopes for the future. This post contains the first part of that conversation.
"I was fortunate at Boston University School of Theology in 1998 to take a doctoral seminar on the diaconate taught by Professor Carter Lindberg, a Lutheran. He had recently participated in an ecumenical dialogue between Anglicans and Lutherans in Hanover, Germany about the diaconate called The Diaconate as Ecumenical Opportunity. A year later, I took another course by Professor Dana Robert entitled “Women in Diakonia and Mission.” I was elated. It was still another Boston University School of Theology staff member, Margaret Wiborg, Director of the Anna Howard Shaw Center, who is responsible for connecting me to you all at the Section of Deacons and Diaconal Ministry in Nashville. As I recall, she asked me for the papers I had been writing for classes, nearly all of which had something to do with the diaconate. She liked them and told me to send them to your colleague, Jimmy Carr. It wasn’t long before you and I were having conversations about writing a book together! " Deacon Hartley recalls his experience at STH. The full conversation can be found here.
Prof. Wesley Wildman Appointed as Co-Leader of New BU Hariri Institute for Computing Research Program
The Boston University School of Theology (STH), together with the Boston University Hariri Institute for Computing, are excited to announce that STH faculty member Wesley Wildman, Professor of Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics, has been appointed as a co-leader to a new Hariri Institute for Computing, Boston University Focused Research Program for his computational and data-driven health research. Professor Wildman will be a primary leader along with Brenda Heaton, Associate Professor in the Departments of Health Policy & Health Services Research (GDSM) and Epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health.
The Hariri Institute for Computing’s Focused Research Programs are designed to evolve and advance Boston University’s research in computing and data science around areas of strategic importance and emerging opportunity. The Institute facilitates research convergence for these programs by providing support and ‘scaffolding’ for groups to coalesce in sustainable ways, with the goal of accelerating research for future funding and broader impact.
Prof. Rady Roldán-Figueroa Named Incoming Director of BU Center for Latin American Studies
Associate Professor of the History of Christianity and Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Rady Roldán-Figueroa has been appointed the incoming Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, announced on May 26, 2021.
“I am very excited about this new leadership role with Pardee School’s Center for Latin American Studies. The ensemble of core and affiliated faculty are among the finest in the country in their fields of study,” Prof. Roldán-Figueroa told the Pardee School in their announcement yesterday.
The full article and information about the appointment can be found on the Pardee School website.