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SEMINARY IN THE CITY
What’s the “seminary in the city” all about?
It’s about traffic: the flow of experience and ideas as the
seminary community engages and is engaged by its larger community.
The “seminary in the city” is a recognition that theology
is constructed on the move, in mission, and that learning occurs
at intersections.
The “seminary in the city” is manifested in first-year
M.Div. student Ramona Tascoe. She comes to seminary
hungry for truth, she says, but not as a blank slate. Dr. Tascoe
brings to the ABSW community more than 25 years of clinical experience
as a physician specializing in internal medicine. She is an award-winning
international public and social health advocate who has worked around
the world with the United Nations, major medical associations, and
various NGOs.
She holds three degrees but desires to learn more, to keep growing.
“And it makes me more effective,” Tascoe says, as she
continues her humanitarian work.
She comes with gifts for the seminary and goes back into the world,
taking with her the gifts of a learning community. That’s
the “seminary in the city.” That’s traffic. And
true traffic never stops.
Dr. Marian Ronan, assistant professor of contemporary
theology and religion, was a participant in “The Color of
God,” an invitational conference at Loyola Marymount University
in February in which 15 faculty members of diverse racial ethnic
backgrounds assessed the relationship between race and religion
in the contemporary academy.
Dr. Judy Yates Siker, assistant professor of New
Testament, is leading a Lenten series on the Gospel of Matthew for
St. Cyprian’s Parish in Long Beach, Calif. Later in April,
she will lead a series on “Grace in Unlikely Places: Bad Girls
of the Bible and the Lessons That They Can Teach Us” at Covenant
Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles. Currently, she is teaching a
Sunday morning series at Brentwood Presbyterian Church in Brentwood,
Calif., on “The Making of the Canon.”
Dr. LeAnn Flesher is also leading a weekly Bible
study. The associate professor of Old Testament is teaching a Bible
study in Spanish with the Latino Fellowship group at First Baptist
Church, Alameda, Calif.
President Keith Russell will be the keynote speaker
at “Living Out the Biblical Model of Community,” a conference
of the American Baptist Churches of Indiana and Kentucky, May 14-15.
Russell is also slated to be the guest preacher April 26 at the
pastoral anniversary of Dr. Kevin Bond of Cathedral of Praise in
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Dr. James Chuck, professor of theology and church
ministry, recently received the Distinguished Alumni/ae Award from
the Pacific School of Religion. Chuck earned his Th.D. degree from
PSR in 1962.
In February, Dr. Nancy Hall, director of continuing
education, attended the annual conference of the Society for the
Advancement of Continuing Education in Ministry, held in Denver.
SACEM is an ecumenical organization representing continuing educators
from seminaries, retreat centers, and denominational offices across
the U.S. and Canada.
Also in February, Dr. George C.L. Cummings, academic
dean and professor of theology, was a keynote speaker for the Samuel
DeWitt Procter Conference on the Black Church in Atlanta.
Dr. Margaret McManus, assistant professor of American
religious history, is presenting a paper on “Radicalism’s
Many Faces: Social Activism and Religious Commitment in the Life
of Vida Dutton Scudder” at the Western Association of Women
Historians meeting at the University of California Santa Barbara
in May. Scudder was an Episcopalian laywoman, friend of Baptist
preacher and scholar Walter Rauschenbusch, and a significant figure
in the Social Gospel movement.
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