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VOLUME 27, NUMBER 1 FALL 2008 T h e SPie Vanderbilt University Divinity School, Graduate Department of Religion, and Oberlin Graduate School of Theology strangers longerNO 1 Fall 2008 T h e SPie Volume 27 • Number 1 • Fall 2008 The Spire is published by Vanderbilt University Divinity School in cooperation with the Office Alumni/ae of Development and Relations. Let- alumni/ae ters to the editor are welcomed, and F e a t u r e s of the Divinity School, the Graduate School’s Department of Religion, and the Oberlin Grad- uate School of Theology are encouraged to sub- mit news of their personal and professional 9 accomplishments to: The Spire InA recognitionSacred Merger of the fortieth anniversary John Frederick Oberlin Quadrangle of the merger between the Oberlin Graduate Office 115 School of Theology and Vanderbilt University 411 21st Avenue, South Divinity School, student essayist Michael Nashville, Tennessee 37240-1121 Alexander Lehman explores the controversies [email protected] surrounding context and memory. by e-mail: _________________________________________ James Hudnut-Beumler, Dean and the Anne Potter Wilson Distinguished Professor of American Religious History Victor Judge, BS’77, MS’79, Editor & Registrar 17 Beth Boord, Assistant Dean of Development ReflectingWater Brings upon her Life “water-walk” in India, alumna Nancy M. Victorin-Vangerud invites Kitty Norton Jones, MDiv’98, readers to ponder the question, “In a world of Assistant Director of Development growing water scarcity, can we reclaim water as a deep symbol of the Christian tradition?” Jenni Ohnstad, Assistant Art Director Renata Moore, Designer 21 _________________________________________ RecentStrangers graduates No Mark Longer Steven Miles and Vanderbilt University is committed to the principles Emily Kate Snyder encourage us to excise My Soul Looks Back In Wonder of equal opportunity and affirmative action. the word “stranger” from our lexicon. 2006 by April Harrison American “Vanderbilt” and the Vanderbilt logo are registered (born 1957, Greenville, South Carolina) mixed media collage on wooden panel trademarks and service marks of Vanderbilt University. 48” x 48” Vanderbilt University Divinity School © 2008 Vanderbilt University photographed by Daniel Dubois “I began painting in 1991 after my mother’s death. I am self- taught and merely a vessel for narrative. Why I have been chosen, I know not; nonetheless, I am humbled by this gift.” —from the artist’s statement 2 Fall 2008 1 From the Dean Our Featured Artisan Canvassing the Great Commission My Immigration Story, Yours, and Ours BY VICTOR JUDGE, EDITOR y mother’s family came to this con- a land that already has Canaanites on it. n the afternoon Anna Russell Kelly, “I want to create a portrait that expresses tinent as part of the great English Jacob’s move to Egypt is a story of a move MDiv’08, accepted the commission the dignity and the faithfulness of the His- MPuritan migration in the seven- forced by famine. The Exodus precipitates Oto conceive and create the cover for panic men who stand each day near the The Spire teenth century. In their case, they arrived on wandering in the wilderness and military this issue of , she arrived at Vander- underpasses on Sixth Avenue, South, and someone else’s land without deeds, pass- battles under Joshua to retake the land. The bilt Divinity School having met earlier with Lafayette Street and wait for contractors to ports, or visas in 1636 and helped found Babylonian exile was another forced move. another commission— the diocesan commit- offer them a day’s work,” she says with the New Haven Colony. My father’s family So, too, was the flight to Egypt of Mary, tee charged with the sacred responsibility confidence of one who has experienced an started arriving from Saxony in the 1830s as Joseph, and their infant Jesus. of guiding the young artist and student epiphany. a younger son sought economic opportunity The daily newspaper and the Bible often of theology as she dis- in southern Ohio and northern Kentucky. provide different perspectives to human cerns her calling to ser- Immigration in that side of family concluded phenomena. From the viewpoint of the cen- vice in the Episcopal “I believe I can develop artistically, intellectually, in 1852 after the failed revolutions beginning turies, we need to adjust to the migration of Church. As she reflected and spiritually when I allow myself to become a in 1848. I have those documents, but I am strangers and to the ways our lives, too, may upon the questions from also close enough to the boat to have heard be uprooted by change. From the Torah we her initial interview with conduit or a medium, like the oil paints.” the stories of choosing to give up the lan- learn that God expected the ancient Hebrews the prelates, she inclined guage of the old country. My own grand- to treat immigrants in their midst well, her head and remarked, “I just babbled.” The countenance for the portrait would mother told me of the painful episode in the decreeing, “You shall also love the stranger, When the alumna of Lake Forest College not be inspired from research but from the 1950s when my mother’s Anglo family was for you were strangers in the land of was asked by one of the commissioners to artist’s ministry to these gentlemen for talking out loud about whether they should Egypt.”(Deuteronomy 10:19) Jesus, history’s PEYTON HOGE explain how a baccalaureate in studio art whom she prepared meals each Wednesday allow their daughter to marry a German. most famous refugee, continued the practice had prepared her for theological education at at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, the site The So there you have my immigration story. of hospitality, talking to Samaritans and cast- As you read the pages of this issue of Vanderbilt Divinity School, she had of her field education practicum. After help- Spire In my family you have people who came to ing cook and serve the meal, Anna Russell ing a demon out of a Syrophoenician gen- I hope you will see that preparation for responded, “I cannot articulate a conclusive Strangers No this land as religious seekers, economic developed her homiletic skills by delivering Anna Russell has captured in tile’s daughter. In this season of xenophobia, the ministry of our future is going on in a answer. Whether I am standing before a Longer opportunists, and political refugees. And wide variety of ways. Students are canvas or reading for Professor John Thata- a sermon to the men who came for food is rendered, or incarnated, from the even in my apparently WASP background, working in internships to help con- manil’s lectures on Buddhist and Christian because they were unable to secure work praxis of her theological education. ethnic suspicions have been part of our ...current immigration debates and the gregations welcome sojourners in Dialogue, I am aware that for the day. The image Reminiscing upon the two decades she familial experience. I will wager that most of their midst. Our students and fac- painting and studying are of the man who has been painting, Anna Russell remembers you reading this column could tell similar forces that give rise to the migration of ulty are working with the Owen efforts not completely of me. I stands alone between waiting her turn at the easel when she was a stories about self and ancestors. My purpose Graduate School of Management believe I can develop artisti- a stone wall and a five-year-old kindergartner at Overbrook in evoking these histories is to recognize that people are nothing new. here at Vanderbilt to explore better cally, intellectually, and spiritu- barbed wire fence School where she painted a Nativity scene the current immigration debates and the ways to eliminate poverty at the ally when I allow myself represents a compos- for her parents’ annual Christmas card. Her forces that give rise to the migration of peo- I cannot help but feel our context needs to be grassroots through microfinance and social to become a conduit or a ite of the men she first public exhibition was at Green Hills ple are nothing new. Even so, here at the rid of a few demons as well. capitalism. Our global education program is medium, like the oil paints.” observed waiting at Mall where her painting of a cow was Divinity School, the issues surrounding The church knows something the world so key to helping us understand the one The firm handshakes she the under- passes or mounted with works by her first-grade peers migration and global poverty are constantly forgets. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ world we live in that we must travel in order received after the interview with whom she broke from the Ensworth School. As a student at on our hearts and minds these days. keepers more than our border’s keepers. to learn how we travel through the academic suggest the commissioners bread in a church din- Harpeth Hall, a college preparatory school Immigration is older than the Bible. Peo- Still, you may be asking, what does all of this years. Next summer Divinity School stu- think Anna Russell to be capa- ing hall. Although for young women, Anna Russell studied ple have been on the move for political, reli- concern have to do with the work of prepar- dents will return to the Arizona-Sonora bor- ble of more than mere bab- her treatment of light with Rosemary Paschall who challenged the gious, military, and economic reasons for ing people for ministry? This is the work of derlands again to understand more deeply bling, and as she begins to and color suggest high schooler’s identity as an artist by asking eons.