Alumni News
Pastor of Family Life, Wenham, MA
First Church in Wenham, United Church of Christ, is currently seeking an Acting Associate Pastor of Family Life. Click here to read more about the position.
Pastor, East Greenwich, RI
Christ Church is seeking an inspiring, experienced pastor to lead their flock. They have 325 members and their average Sunday attendance is 400. Christ Church is a contemporary style in the Evangelical Covenant denomination and is poised for growth.
Follow this link for the Application Packet as well as several links with more information, including the Job Description.
Development and Operations Manager, Boston, MA
Life Together, a young adult leadership and formation program of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, is hiring a part-time Development and Operations Manager.
To read more about the position, click here.
Krista Millay (STH'11): Director of the Women's Resource Center at the University of Arizona
Krista Millay is Director of the Women's Resource Center at the University of Arizona. She earned her Doctor of Theology in Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics from Boston University in 2011, with a dissertation focused on women’s negotiation of patriarchal structures, comparing first century religious women and their modern day contemporaries through the framework of ritual using soteriological themes. She is widely published in national outlets, such as Huffington Post and Ms. Magazine, on the intersectional topics of parenting, sexual violence prevention, and feminism. Krista’s undergraduate work in student development, graduate work in feminist theory, and her professional experience in social justice work make her an expert as well as passionate advocate for issues of gender equity, feminism, healthy masculinity and sexual assault prevention. Of all her work, however, Krista is most passionate about being a mother.
What do you feel is your greatest accomplishment since graduating from STH?
I am so deeply grateful for the mindful, feminist, critical inquiry skills that I developed during my time at STH, for the many professors who gave extra time to have long conversations that developed my mind and thinking. These skills have not only helped me to find my way into a really fun feminist job where I use those skills daily, but they have also helped me in my writing – with ten op-ed pieces published over the last year. But, honestly, my greatest accomplishment – and the best use of my STH skills! – has come with being a mom. Helping my kids make their start in a world that is so often binary, sexist, and racist has put my skills to use like never before!
What advice would you give a current STH student?
I would encourage current STH students to keep other passions and interests alive, even when they don’t seem to have an obvious or current intersection with your theological work. For me, those other interests ended up being my main career focus. But the skills, experiences, and connections you develop at STH will inform whatever path(s) you take. Be open to however the winding path may lead you. Follow what sparks your interest.
Why did you choose to work at the University of Arizona’s Women’s Resource Center?
I always thought I would teach theology, but when I felt like that was no longer the right path, I knew that leading a Women’s Center would be my dream job. It preserved my strong passion for working with students, while allowing me to bring in my feminist knowledge. When the position came open, I was already at UA, working in Judicial Affairs, so the campus connections, knowledge of current issues, and student relationships that I had developed over the previous year or so really served my preparation as a competitive candidate.
What skills or experiences would benefit someone wanting to work on raising awareness of sex, gender, equity, feminism, and masculinity on a college campus?
Get involved in the work being done on campus right now! Being a part of the STH group CAUSE: Justice and Partakers really transformed my social justice activism, and ignited passions that changed my path. Whatever sparks your passion, find out how or where you can put energy toward it. Those experiences, knowledge, and connections can be even more important than the credential you are earning.
Can you give us an example of a mistake you have learned from during your career?
I am constantly learning about my privilege as a white hetero cis person, particularly when I make mistakes or mis-speak. Like when I misgender a student by not using their pronouns or fail to notice microaggressions that make students feel unwelcome. The practical application of intersectional feminism demands that we make space where marginalized voices can be heard and prioritized. But this can be challenging in an undergraduate feminist space (like the Women’s Resource Center), when everyone who is here has sought out the space for safety and community. Creating a brave space and community where we can recognize our privileges in the midst of our shared oppressions is the work.
What was the most important experience you’ve had that has helped you in your career?
Studying with Dr. Shelly Rambo – having her push me more than any other professor in my feminist thinking – was an absolute shift in my life’s path. I am really grateful for the time I spent learning from and talking with her. Also, the feminist friends I had at STH, especially Nicole Long, helped me to link my feminism to other critically important issues, like racism, classism, health, and the environment. STH was simply an amazing place to be. I am really grateful to have spent time there.
Worship Leader, Crestview, FL
Crosspoint UMC currently has an open full-time Worship Leader position at the North Crestview campus (one of four campuses). The purpose of this position is to champion the vision of connecting people to Christ through Worship and Creative Arts. This is primarily carried out through the leading and recruitment of volunteer artists and technicians, as well as the organization and execution of all creative elements of music and production in North Crestview campus worship experiences.
Interested applicants can head to Crosspoint employment page (yourcrosspointcc.org/employment) and scroll down to "North Crestview" to download a full Job Description (PDF) and complete an Application (PDF). Applicants can download the application, complete it, and attach it in an e-mail to Jeremy Thiess at jthiess@yourcrosspoint.org along with your resume and short Christian testimony. We are taking applications until the end of May.
Dean Moore's Response to United Methodist Judicial Council Ruling on Bishop Karen Oliveto
Concern for Covenant and Courage: Sharing from my heart
Dear Beloved Community,
How can a church body give public witness again and again to the “illegality” of LGBTQ persons? People can disagree in their perspectives on homosexuality and gender identity without focusing the church’s energies on upholding one view of biblical interpretation and holiness, and doing so in ways that violate human lives and silently feed violence in the larger society. That is what a covenantal community is: a community held by God, seeking to love one another in all of our differences and seeking to love the world together.
No one is beloved if all are not beloved. Love cannot be stingy! The witness of the Christian Church, and the witness of any religious tradition, cannot be less than full love for every person and every being in God’s creation. Why then can the United Methodist Church (my beloved church!) persist in naming one group of people as violators of church law, thus shaping social attitudes that can quickly turn against people in the LGBTQ community, and against immigrants, persons of color, and any other community who have been subject to generations of discrimination?
The United Methodist Judicial Council ruling of April 28, 2017, can be debated legally and the consequences are still in the hands of due process.[1] The Judicial Council’s decision was to declare the consecration of Bishop Karen Oliveto against Church law, though Bishop Oliveto remains in good standing in the United Methodist Church until such time that due process might conclude otherwise. This is more than a legal decision, however. It is a symbolic public witness. Such witness places judgment in the limelight, rather than commitment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” and to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31a). Ironically, the decision is made as the UMC Commission on a Way Forward seeks a path of unity that can embrace all people, while also recognizing that people hold conflicting and sincerely-held perspectives.
In the aftershock of this ruling, I think of our BU School of Theology community. As a people, we are diverse in every way, including gender identity and sexual orientation, faith tradition, race, country of origin, abilities, social class, immigration status, and theological and social perspectives. What does it mean to be in covenant with such a community – to love and live well with all? Similarly, what does it mean for United Methodist to be in covenant with a large, global denomination? One thing it does not and cannot mean is that everyone in the community looks and thinks alike, that the community is bound by agreement. In Christian perspective, covenant is a gift of God, and it binds all people and creatures to God and one another.
Bishop Oliveto understands this herself. She wrote on Facebook after the decision was rendered: “There is much more to say but for now remember these words from Ephesians 4:2 "Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." Let our love for each other (which is a good and holy thing) and the love of God (which never fails us) be our guide in these days.[2] May we all have courage to live in such a Spirit-led, covenantal way!
With deep compassion for all of you,
Mary Elizabeth Moore
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[1] See http://www.umc.org/decisions/71953 for a digest of the Judicial Council decision. Key elements include: “Paragraph 304.3 prohibits the consecration as bishop of a self-avowed practicing homosexual … Under the long-standing principle of legality, no individual member or entity may violate, ignore, or negate Church law. It is not lawful for the college of bishops of any jurisdictional or central conference to consecrate a self-avowed practicing homosexual bishop. Paragraph 310.2(d) requires that all clergy persons make a complete dedication to the highest ideals of the Christian life, including but not limited to, their commitment to abide by and uphold the Church’s definition of marriage and stance on homosexuality. An openly homosexual and partnered bishop is in violation of these minimum standards.”
[2] Quoted with permission.
Brenda Lifland Buckwell (STH'98) publishes new book, The Advent of God's Word: Listening for the Power of the Divine Whisper
Congratulations to Brenda Lifland Buckwell (STH'98), who recently published a book titled, The Advent of God's Word: Listening for the Power of the Divine Whisper, Skylights Path Publisher.
Brenda is the founder of Living Streams Flowing Water (2016) online and onsite spiritual formation ministry provides spiritual direction, coaching, educator, consultation with leadership teams for integration of spiritual formation as foundation of ministry and retreat leadership. www.livingstreamsflowingwater.com
Susan Kelley Shaffer (STH'02)
We are sad to report that Susan Kelley Shaffer (STH'02) passed away on May 3rd unexpectedly in a car crash. Susan had been working on the topic of nature in religion, and was truly an amazing woman.
Click here to read the news story.
Wonwha Ryu (STH'85)
Rev. Wonwha Lee Ryu
(June 16, 1927 - February 12, 2017)
Wonwha was born during the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea in a mountain village near Gapyeong to a slash-and-burn farming family. At a time when girls were not encouraged to receive education, she went to Ehwa Woman’s University in Seoul, because her Christian parents insisted that their ten children, both boys and girls, all receive a college education.
She received her BA in Christian Social Work in 1950 as the Korean War broke out and, herself a war refugee, became a residential teacher at The Orphans Home of Korea in Jeju Island. Upon returning to Seoul, she became the Y-Teen Program Director at Seoul YWCA. In 1954, she was selected to participate in the International YWCA Leadership Project in New York, This nine-month sojourn in the USA opened her global horizon.
She got married to Ji Shik Ryu in 1955, back in Korea, and gave up her full-time position at the Y to raise their four children, but continued to volunteer at Seoul YWCA, serving in many key committees, later becoming a board member and Vice-President.
She received a certificate in counseling at Seoul National University in 1971, translated Psychology of Middle School Students by Hadana Isoko from Japanese to Korean (1972), and wrote The 50 Year History of YWCA in Korea (1975).
In 1977, at the age of 50, she immigrated to the USA with her husband and four children, became a member of Glendale: First UMC, and began her immigrant life as a day-care center aid and an operator of a dry-cleaning drop-off shop.
At the age of 55, she finally responded to her call and enrolled at Boson University School of Theology, receiving an M.Div. in 1985. She was ordained Deacon at the age of 60 (along with her second son, Charles). She served as Associate Pastor at North Hollywood UMC (2 years), and as the Pastor of the First Korean UMC of Los Angeles (8 years). She was the first woman pastor-in-charge appointed to a Korean congregation. She retired in 1997 continuing to support and encourage younger women pastors.
Throughout her long life’s faith-journey, she traversed great socio-economic-geographical-cultural distances and overcame many limiting situations imposed on women. She is survived by her husband of 62 years, four children and four grandchildren with her first great grandchild expected.
--Rev. Charles Ryu (New York Annual Conference)
School of Theology Alumna Receives 2017 Newcombe Fellowship
Boston University School of Theology alumna Jennifer Quigley (STH '11) has been named one of 21 Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellows for 2017 at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.
The Newcombe Fellowship is the nation’s largest and most prestigious award for doctoral candidates in the humanities and social sciences, addressing questions of ethical and religious values. Each Fellow receives a 12-month award of $25,000 to support their final year of dissertation work.
Jennifer is completing her ThD dissertation titled Divine Accounting: Theo-economic Rhetoric in the Letter the Philippians, at the Harvard Divinity School. Congratulations, Jennifer! Please view the full press release from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation below.
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2017 CHARLOTTE W. NEWCOMBE DOCTORAL DISSERTATION FELLOWS NAMED
FOUNDATION NAMES 21 FELLOWS IN ITS 36TH YEAR
PRINCETON, NJ (Tuesday, May 2, 2017)–Today, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has announced awards to 21 exceptional scholars who make up this year’s class of Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellows.
The Newcombe Fellowship is the nation’s largest and most prestigious award for Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences addressing questions of ethical and religious values. The highly selective program provides each Fellow with a 12-month award of $25,000 to support the final year of dissertation work.
The 2017 Fellows are writing on such topics as literary representations of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, from 1650 to 1865; the definition of sin as a violation of divine law; how religion has shaped institutional structures and experiences of mass incarceration in the United States; and blasphemy as a legal category in early and medieval Islamic history. (See the full list of Fellows below.)
Fellows are completing their research at some of the nation’s top institutions. They are working toward the Ph.D. at Brown University, the University of Chicago, Duke University, Harvard University, the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor, Northwestern University, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Pittsburgh, Princeton University, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Funded by the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, the Fellowship was created in 1981 and has supported just over 1,200 doctoral candidates, most of them now noted faculty and thought leaders in their fields. The Fellowships are designed to encourage original and significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences.
For more information on the Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship, please visit http://woodrow.org/fellowships/newcombe/.
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About the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
Founded in 1945, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (www.woodrow.org) identifies and develops the nation’s best minds to meet its most critical challenges. The Foundation supports its Fellows as the next generation of leaders shaping American society.
CHARLOTTE W. NEWCOMBE DOCTORAL DISSERTATION FELLOWS, 2017
Daniel Cochran • University of Wisconsin – Madison, art history
Building the Body of Christ: Art, Architecture, and the Formation of Early Christian Identities
Zebulon Dingley • University of Chicago, anthropology
Kinship, Capital, and the Occult on the South Coast of Kenya
Samuel Gavin • University of Pittsburgh, philosophy
Constitutivism and Natural Normativity in Ethics
Ean High • Northwestern University, English
Quakerism, Silence, and the Religious Body in American Literature, 1650–1865
Randeep Hothi • University of Michigan—Ann Arbor, Asian languages & cultures
Sikhism Will Be Televised: Recognition and Religion-Making At Diasporic-Sikh Television Networks
Craig Iffland • University of Notre Dame, theology
Following and Not-Following the Divine Law
Sarah Islam • Princeton University, Near Eastern studies
Blasphemy as a Legal Category in Early and Medieval Islamic History
Gustavo Maya • Princeton University, religion
Resisting Exploitation: The Farmworker Struggle for Justice and the Ethics of Means
Alexander McKinley • Duke University, graduate program in religion
Mountain at a Center of the World
Kalonji Nzinga • Northwestern University, learning sciences
The Social Conscience of Rap: Moral Socialization Within Hip-Hop Culture
Cyrus O’Brien • University of Michigan—Ann Arbor, anthropology and history
Faith in Imprisonment: Religion and the Development of Mass Incarceration in Florida
Daniel Platt • Brown University, American studies
Race, Risk, and Financial Capitalism in the United States, 1870–1940
Jennifer Quigley • Harvard University, Harvard Divinity School
Divine Accounting: Theo-economic Rhetoric in the Letter to the Philippians
Hannah Scheidt • Northwestern University, religious studies
Practicing Atheism: Culture, Media, and Ritual in the Contemporary Atheist Network
Brian Smithson • Duke University, cultural anthropology
Piety in Production: Moviemaking as Improvised Religious Practice in Benin
Debby Sneed • University of California—Los Angeles, archaeology
The Life Cycle of Disability in Ancient Greece
Emiko Stock • Cornell University, anthropology
Touching History: An Anthropology With Images | Cham | Sayyids | Cambodia | Iran
Elizabeth Thelen • University of California—Berkeley, history
Intersected Communities: Urban Histories of Rajasthan, c. 1500 – 1800
Sabine Tsuruda • University of California—Los Angeles, philosophy
Moral Agency and the Workplace
Daisy Vargas • University of California—Riverside, history
Mexican Religion on Trial: Race, Religion and the Law in the U.S.- Mexico Borderlands
Arthur Zárate • Columbia University, history
Disciplining the Soul: Materialities of Belief and Moral Technologies of Self on the Eve of Islamic Revival in Egypt, 1947–1967