Confronting Challenges and Cultivating Hope: Recap of the 2024 Distinguished Alumni Panel
After the bestowing of honorifics during matriculation chapel last month, this year’s Distinguished Alumni addressed the STH community over a shared meal to offer insight into the key challenges facing their communities in the coming decade and bear witness to the signs of hope still emerging. Their wisdom and transparency offered listeners means of confronting such challenges in their own contexts as engaged actors in the ongoing movement towards justice.
When asked to name the primary issues 
faced in their work, the realities of the climate crisis and threats to the development of socio-economic and racial justice permeated the responses of each panelist. Dr. Emma A. Escobar noted historical familiarity with such problems, voicing, “As I reflect on the challenges we face in the upcoming decade, I see that many of them are the same struggles our ancestors confronted. We continue to stand against the giant empire of capitalism, which creates a widening gap for the poor, the vulnerable, and people of color.” Forced migration and inaccessibility of housing were named among the effects of unaddressed environmental issues that disproportionately affect marginalized communities. Multiple panelists also illuminated the compounding repercussions of individualism on vulnerable populations in need of communal care. In light of election season and the tendency to construct ideological divides, Rev. Dr. Dianne Reistroffer spoke of the need to “continue to lift up the vision of the beloved community and inclusion, as well as broad coalition building where mutuality and interdependence are nurtured and promoted.” Her concerns also touched on the need for trained theologians operating within faith communities to responsibly interpret and apply scriptures in our times. Dr. Rodolfo Ramos Nolasco Jr. integrated the increase of artificial intelligence into the conversation, bringing forth the evolving relationship between such technology and theological education, which sits as the focus of his developing manuscript, Holy Hacking: Navigating the Intersection of Narrow AI and Pastoral Care. The challenges of hope and action themselves were addressed by Mr. Matthew L. Greer, who testified to 
“the very real threat to what so many of us regarded as the inevitable and irrecoverable forward movement toward socio-economic, gender equality and racial justice, including but not limited reproductive rights and gender and sexual orientation.” From fighting the rise of White Christian Nationalism to economic inequality to the accessibility of holistic theological training, the answers of the Distinguished Alumni made clear the intersectional nature of each of their identified challenges.
The matriculation service earlier that day served as a launching point for the panelists to consider the sites of hope and encouragement in the midst of such grievous challenges. Reflecting on his role as Director of Music and Worship Arts and experiences in communal worship, Mr. Greer noted the healing power of collective singing. Physical presence and fellowship with one another were identified as invaluable, as he commented, “I think our major source of hope, our secret sauce, is that we are in the business of getting people to show up, and creating community.” Rev. Dr. Reistroffer called attention to the number of matriculating students across degree programs that day, interpreting it as a sign that folks were still responding to their purpose and intentionally pursuing spiritual training to address cultural challenges. She also pointed to the recent welcome of LGBTQIA+ lay and clergy people into the United Methodist Church as a means of encouragement. Community was once again emphasized as Dr. Escobar identified The Beloved Community Incubator as an organization that has centered necessary immigration work. Challenges were discussed as opportunities to expand to serve intertwining issues and engage in policy work to confront injustice in a lasting manner. 
For queer individuals, Dr. Nolasco finds signs of hope first by turning inwards, saying, “the seed of the divine is deeply alive and implanted in us. We are, after all, the beloved queers of God, created in the image of the Queer God.” Emerging out of such assurance, Dr. Nolasco offered a call to listeners to again turn outward: “My dear queer siblings, we cannot be a one-issue social movement. Our queerness demands that we form a human chain with other individuals and communities who, like us, have been fighting and dismantling structures and systems of oppression.”
Engaging with the Distinguished Alumni panel proved to be both an illuminating and encouraging time of the very fellowship that sustains communities. The School of Theology remains grateful to each of the Distinguished Alumni for their prophetic engagement with numerous cultural challenges and their commitment to notice, proclaim, and themselves become signs of hope along the way.