{"id":43786,"date":"2020-07-15T09:02:10","date_gmt":"2020-07-15T13:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/?p=43786"},"modified":"2020-07-20T10:54:54","modified_gmt":"2020-07-20T14:54:54","slug":"busth-announces-distinguished-alums-for-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/busth-announces-distinguished-alums-for-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"BUSTH Announces Distinguished Alums for 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 16, 2020 \u2013<\/strong>\u00a0The Boston University School of Theology (BUSTH) is pleased to announce this year’s Distinguished Alumni\/ae for 2020. A list of previous winners can be found on the BUSTH website.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe 2020 Distinguished Alums are extraordinary. They have crafted new paths of ministry with migrants and people living on the streets, local churches, neighborhoods, children, denominational bodies, people living in crisis and post-crisis trauma, and contexts crying for justice and ecological wellbeing<\/span>,\u201d said Mary Elizabeth Moore, dean<\/a>. \u201cWe are honored that they left their marks on BUSTH and now serve as daring witnesses to the \u201cKin-dom of God<\/span>.\u201d<\/p>\n

A celebration of these alums and their achievements will be part of a special virtual Community Day, scheduled for September 16. Please check our Alum Events page<\/a> in the coming weeks for information on how to join us via Zoom.<\/p>\n

2020 Distinguished Alumni\/ae<\/h5>\n

Bishop LaTrelle Easterling (2004, MDiv)
\nReverend Allen Ewing-Merrill (2000, MDiv)
\nReverend Cristina Rathbone (2009, MDiv)<\/p>\n

In the category of Emerging Leader:<\/strong>
\nReverend Katie Cole (STH 2012, MDiv, SSW 2012, MSW)<\/p>\n

2020 Distinguished Alumni\/ae Biographies<\/h5>\n

\"\"Bishop LaTrelle Easterling (2004, MDiv)<\/strong> was appointed bishop of the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church in 2016, and she was the first woman bishop of that Conference. Upon arriving in the Baltimore-Washington Conference, she founded The Seeds of Security ministry, or SOS, which benefits people in crisis who are seeking to leave abusive relationships. Prior to being elected bishop, she served as Dean of the Cabinet of the New England Annual Conference and as a superintendent, leading 57 congregations in the Boston Hope District. A delegate to General and Jurisdictional Conference in 2012 and 2016, Bishop Easterling serves on a number of boards and agencies. She also serves as the President of the Northeast Jurisdiction Multi-Ethnic Center, the Anna Howard Shaw Board of Boston University School of Theology, and Boston University School of Theology Dean\u2019s Advisory Board. A strong proponent of education, Bishop Easterling received a bachelor\u2019s degree from Indiana University and a Law degree from Indiana University School of Law. She graduated summa cum laude in 2004 with a Master of Divinity from Boston University School of Theology.<\/p>\n

\"\"Reverend Allen Ewing-Merrill (2000, MDiv)<\/strong> is an advocate and community builder. He is the Executive Director of The BTS Center<\/a>,\u00a0the organizational successor to Bangor Theological Seminary<\/span>.\u00a0A Maine native, he has most recently served as the Co-Pastor (with his wife, The Rev. Sara Ewing-Merrill) of\u00a0<\/span>HopeGateWay<\/a>, a\u00a0United Methodist Community in Portland. He is also the founder and former convener of\u00a0<\/span>Moral Movement Maine<\/a>, a network that advocates for social\u00a0justice in the state, and he serves on the Board of Directors of the\u00a0<\/span>Maine\u00a0Council of Churches<\/a>, where he served for several years as Vice-President. A\u00a0graduate of the University of Maine (Orono), Ewing-Merrill taught high\u00a0school English before attending the Boston University School of Theology.\u00a0He graduated magna cum laude in 2000. After a pastorate\u00a0at First United Methodist Church of Hudson, MA, he was appointed as co-pastor of the former Chestnut Street United Methodist Church, which\u00a0subsequently became HopeGateWay. From 2011-2016 he also served as\u00a0Executive Director of\u00a0<\/span>Hope Acts<\/a>, a faith-based nonprofit focusing on\u00a0immigrant support and addiction recovery.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"A former journalist, Reverend Cristina Rathbone (2009, MDiv)<\/strong> matriculated at Boston University School of Theology after a profound conversion experience and in response to a call to serve vulnerable populations. She advocated for such populations in her journalism (author of two books, A World Apart: Women, Prison, and Life Behind Bars<\/span>, and On the Outside Looking In: A Year in the Inner-City High School<\/span>) and continues to do so in her ministry as an Episcopal priest. Her career has always been oriented around recognizing and restoring human dignity. After seminary, she began working at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston as a canon missioner. She became been a pastor to downtown Boston’s homeless community, developing and nurturing numerous ministry programs and gatherings that combine to form the cathedral church\u2019s MANNA (Many Angels Needed Now and Always) community, with and for people who are experiencing homelessness or who have been unhoused. She was ordained in the Episcopal church during her time at St. Paul\u2019s. Most recently, \u2018Tina\u2019 worked with asylum-seekers in Ciudad Juarez to birth a cross-border chaplaincy with the Episcopal Diocese of Rio Grande, that seeks to serve all people in transit through Mexico to the U.S.<\/p>\n

Emerging Leader<\/h5>\n

\"\"Reverend Katie Cole (2012, MDiv, SSW 2012, MSW)<\/strong> is the Director of Children and Youth Ministries at Fourth Presbyterian Church in South Boston. Katie grew up in North Carolina and attended UNC Chapel Hill, where she did not study music, religion, or social work, but found herself doing all three all of the time. Reverend Cole moved to Boston from North Carolina in 2008 to pursue her MDiv and MSW at Boston University. She had every intention of moving back South after finishing, but her adventures in Boston with the community at Fourth Presbyterian Church, as well as her organizing work with the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, compelled her to stay a little bit longer. She was ordained on March 4, 2018. In 2018, Rev. Cole began the program Peace by Piece, a program for post-traumatic healing that provides free monthly trauma support programming using a community-based approach to foster recovery and healing from all sources of post-traumatic stress, grief, or losses of all types.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July 16, 2020 \u2013\u00a0The Boston University School of Theology (BUSTH) is pleased to announce this year’s Distinguished Alumni\/ae for 2020. A list of previous winners can be found on the BUSTH website. \u201cThe 2020 Distinguished Alums are extraordinary. They have crafted new paths of ministry with migrants and people living on the streets, local churches, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12612,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[200,203],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43786"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12612"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43786"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43838,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43786\/revisions\/43838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}