DIVINITY DUKE UNIVERSITY | Fall 2017 Awakening to God’s Love in times of Anxietyand Change BREATHE: MINISTERS OF THE MIRACULOUS OUR IDENTITY IS FOUND By J. Kameron Carter IN GOD’S LOVE REPAIRING BROKEN TRUST By Elaine A. Heath By Nathan Kirkpatrick FALL 2017 | A A New Class of Divinity School Graduates Made Possible by You! Be Part of the Divinity Annual Fund! OUR CALLED AND GIFTED Divinity students study, pray, and work Every gift—no matter every day in their preparation for ministry. how large—makes a Duke Divinity School But they need your help! experience possible! Your gift to the Divinity Annual Fund makes it possible for Divinity students to For more information on receive financial aid, participate in field education, and experience innovative how you can be part of teaching and research programs. In 2016–17, a record $813,000 given to the Divinity the Divinity Annual Fund, Annual Fund helped to transform 179 students into Duke Divinity School graduates contact us at 919-660-3456 who are serving in churches and ministries across the country. or gifts.duke.edu/divinity. PHOTO BY LES TODD BE PART OF MAKING IT POSSIBLE! To give to the Divinity Annual Fund, see divinity.duke.edu/give FALL 2017 DIVINITY Volume 17, Number 1 contributors ELAINE A. HEATH is the dean and professor of missional and J. KAMERON CARTER is “If you want to find God, if pastoral theology at Duke Divinity School. Her associate you want to encounter the research focuses on evangelism and spirituality, professor of Spirit, if you want to see evangelism and gender, new monasticism, and theology, English, the sacred, show up in the emergence in church and theological education. and African crisis—because Christ is at She is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and American studies at Duke the crisis.” p. 21. the co-founder of Missional Wisdom Foundation, which provides Divinity School. His work in opportunities for clergy and laity African American and African to learn how to live in intentional, “We need to know Diaspora studies uses theological concepts, critical theory, and missional communities in diverse social at an emotional poetry to explore questions about the theory and practice of contexts. The revised version of her level that God blackness, particularly as an alternate “pedagogy of the sacred” book The Mystic Way of Evangelism is with us in the expressed by the black church at its best. He is the author of (Baker Academic), along with a study anxiety-producing Race: A Theological Account (Oxford University Press). guide, will be published this fall. change.” p. 8. DANIEL CAMACHO is a contributing opinion writer for SUSAN EASTMAN is associate research professor of New Guardian US, and he has been published in Testament at Duke Divinity School. Her scholarly The Christian Century, Religion Dispatches, focus is on Paul’s letters in relationship to the Sojourners, formation and transformation of Christian identity, DUKE magazine, “What does it mean to tell and her current research examines key Pauline TIME, and the Washington people who face deporta- texts in conversation with cognitive psychology, philosophy, and Post. He earned his master tion, travel bans, and losing “The cruciform power of God neuroscience. She is of divinity degree from Duke health coverage that God is ordained in The Episcopal Divinity School in 2017. operates out of divine abundance in charge?” p. 24 Church and has served and loving gift; it can indeed churches across the transform individuals and country. Her most recent WARREN KINGHORN holds a joint appointment as associate communities, because it gets book, Paul and the under our skin and behind our research professor of psychiatry and pastoral and Person: Reframing Paul’s moral theology at Duke University Medical Center defenses, undoing our pride Anthropology (Eerdmans), and Duke Divinity School. His work centers on the and fear.” p. 13. will be published this fall. role of religious communities in caring for persons with mental health problems and on ways in which Christians engage with practices of “Courage names not the NATHAN KIRKPATRICK is the managing director of Alban at modern healthcare. He is absence of fear but the Duke Divinity School. He designs educational also a staff psychiatrist programs and leadership development for senior disposition in our fear to and clinical teacher at the church and nonprofit leaders and works with confront obstacles to justice Durham VA Medical Center publisher Rowman & Littlefield to publish Alban and then to endure the pain and a co-director of the books. He is a Ph.D. and hardship that this Theology, Medicine, and “The collar that I was wearing, candidate in theology at confrontation brings.” Culture initiative at Duke in the belief that it reflected the University of Durham p. 40. Divinity School. (U.K.) and is an ordained an availability, an openness, a minister in The Episcopal vulnerability to be with people Church, serving as in all the complexities of their assistant to the rector at lives, was no longer a sign of Church of the Advocate in trustworthiness but a source for Chapel Hill, N.C. suspicion.” p. 15. FALL 2017 | 1 contents FEATURES 4 10 BREATHE: FINDING OUR CONFLICT AND THE SCHOOL OF LOVE: IDENTITY IN GOD’S LOVE IN PAUL AND THE CORINTHIANS TIMES OF ANXIETY AND CHANGE The apostle Paul gave instructions to a Systems change often provokes anxiety. church navigating both internal conflict Good leaders will be prepared for this and external cultural change anxiety and will navigate it well By Susan Eastman By Elaine A. Heath 14 REPAIRING BROKEN TRUST Trust in religious institutions and leaders has plummeted. How can clergy respond to anxiety and change when their congregations and communities might not respect their position? By Nathan Kirkpatrick 18 A MINISTER OF THE MIRACULOUS A lesson to new Divinity School graduates and all those in ministry facing cultural and personal change, adapted from the 2017 Duke Divinity School Baccalaureate sermon By J. Kameron Carter 22 UPSTAIRS AND DOWNSTAIRS Reflecting on God’s power after an election By Daniel Camacho 2 | DIVINITY DEPARTMENTS 26 34 PROGRAMS & EVENTS: FACULTY & STAFF NOTES Addressing Anxiety during Change and Conflict 37 CLASS NOTES 33 39 DEATHS NEW BOOKS FROM DUKE DIVINITY FACULTY 40 ON THE COVER: Waves at Nags Head, N.C., REFLECTIONS in August, 2017. Photo by Regina Barnhill, 41 B Design Studio. MEDITATION PUBLISHER: DIVINITY magazine publishes a Fall and Spring issue each year. Office of the Dean The magazine represents the engagement of Duke Divinity School with Elaine A. Heath, Dean and Professor of Missional and Pastoral Theology important topics and invites friends, supporters, alumni, and others in our community to participate in the story of what is happening here. EDITOR: Heather Moffitt, Associate Director of Communications We’d like to hear from you! For comments or feedback on DIVINITY magazine, please write: Editor, DIVINITY magazine, Duke Divinity School, Produced by the Office of Communications, Duke Divinity School • Box 90970, Durham, NC 27708-0970 • Or email: [email protected] Audrey Ward, Associate Dean • Proofreading by Derek Keefe • Design by B Design Studio, LLC, www.bdesign-studio.com • Please include a daytime phone number and an email address. Copyright © 2017 Duke Divinity School • All rights reserved. Letters to the editor may be edited for clarity or length. FALL 2017 | 3 4 | DIVINITY breathe Our identity is found in God’s love during times of anxiety and change BY ELAINE A. HEATH ethesda United Methodist Church in Haw Creek, B N.C., is a small, semi-rural church in the midst of staggering change. That change is happening at Bethesda does not distinguish it from churches both large and small, rural and urban, across the nation. What is noteworthy at Bethesda is the direction of this change and the response from leaders, congregants, and the community. FALL 2017 | 5 A few years ago, a visitor to Portions of this article have been Bethesda UMC would have seen adapted from God Unbound, a nondescript patch of grass and a by Elaine A. Heath (Upper Room parking lot with a sign discouraging Books), which explores God’s wisdom anyone other than church members from the book of Galatians from parking there. Founded in 1844, for the anxious church. the church was on the verge of being closed. What options did a small church in a small community have The changes at Bethesda go far to reverse what appeared to be the beyond a welcoming parking lot and inevitable trend toward decline and playground. Transformation began then disappearance? when the dozen or so members decided to change rather than A GOSPEL-SHAPED CHURCH close. With the help of their district In my work I have exhorted the church superintendent, congregational leaders The story of the birth and ongoing to move away from staid traditionalism began meeting with leaders from the development of the Missional into dynamic, spiritually deep yet Missional Wisdom Foundation and the Wisdom Foundation is described nimble expressions of the church. I Western North Carolina Conference in Missional.Monastic.Mainline: believe we must now take up the of the UMC to discuss possibilities. A Guide to Starting Missional gospel-shaped movement of Jesus that Over the course of three years, a Micro-Communities in Historic finds solidarity with “the least of these” mutually agreeable plan was put into Mainline Traditions by Elaine and is accessible to and largely led action to repurpose the building and A. Heath and Larry Duggins by laypeople. It is imperative that the parsonage in ways that would create a (Cascade). See www.missional- institutional church that is collapsing neighborhood hub and contribute to wisdom.com to learn about their beneath bureaucratic top heaviness, the flourishing of the village of Haw work to revitalize churches and clergy-centric practice, and ecclesiastic Creek.