Vol 5. Iss. 1: Editors' Note

In one week voters in the United States will elect a new President and Congress – who will in turn appoint and confirm the next majority of the Supreme Court. This alone has made it necessary for The Turning House to offer the community of Union Theological Seminary reflections on what the election has meant over the past few months and could mean for the next few years. Yet this election has also engaged “faith,” in various guises, more than usual; and on account of the policies of the current Administration, the whole world awaits the outcome of this election more than usual. These have made it only more pressing to share voice from the community prior to the election. We have focused on the intersection of religion and politics, and tried to emphasize issues that are (or at least have been made) germane to that connection. We make no claim to represent all the issues or views that are important to people who believe in God, democracy, or even both. But we have invited a half-dozen excellent writers from within the Seminary to prepare us for the booths.

With this issue, The Turning House notes a change in leadership. Beth Waltemath, Heath Reynolds, Alyssa Rayman-Reed, and Jeremy Posadas stunningly redefined the quality of this journal last year. We are grateful for the hard work of Beth and Alyssa, even as we welcome Andrea Davis and John Shorb to this year’s staff. As always, if you’d like to write for us, we’d like to talk to you: email us at TheTurningHouse @ gmail.com. And be sure to read The Turning House blog, http://TurningHouse.blogspot.com.

To the polls!

Vol 5. Iss. 1: Protest as Sermon

by Hannah Giffen

Walking down the streets crowded with protesters at the United for Peace and Justice march at the Republican National Convention in August, I longed for publicity. With each camera that turned towards our “Hey, hey…Ho, Ho...Bad theology’s got to go!,” I envisioned a clip on a national TV news show. It would be a break from all the hours of publicity devoted to a Christianity whose loudest messages are messages of hate: a few seconds of footage of those crazy Union students, who believe that Jesus was an anti-poverty activist, a pacifist, and more than anything, a bearer of radical love.

And so, I got up early on that Sunday, and went to march. I like marching because it’s a way of speaking with your body. Just being at a march makes a statement; it’s a sermon that the rest of the world can see. Like voting, many people think that it won’t matter if you do it or not – and yet, if enough people do it, it can have a large impact. Instead of a single-bodied sermon, it’s hundreds or thousands or millions of bodies coming together to make a huge, collaborative, banner-sized statement. It matters for the people who are there, who gain courage to do something about their common beliefs. It also matters for the people who aren’t there, who may have more reason to think about why they agree or disagree with the message powerfully demonstrated by the movement of masses of bodies.

For me, this is a clearly a time in which huge bannersized messages are needed: a time in which the decisions that are made will change tthis is a clearly a time in which huge banner-sized messages are needed:this is a clearly a time in which huge banner-sized messages are needed: the course of our history for good or for evil. America and Christianity are both very much in need of the messages that will help them gain humility, generosity, and a willingness to be in true community with others. To get there, we have to bear witness to our beliefs, spreading our message to those who are of a different mindset, and imprinting the message more firmly on our own minds, on our own lives. I hope that here, at Union, we will continue to empower each other, with our mouths and with our bodies, to bring about the Reign of God on earth. Together, we can turn the cameras towards a different Christianity.

Vol 5. Iss. 1: Running On Faith

by Justin Latterell

In 1960, John F. Kennedy was running for President, and running away from the perception that he was more accountable to the Vatican than to the American people. When it came to the question of his faith, JFK’s response was that he would “be a President who happened to be Catholic, not a Catholic President.” That sentiment seems to have stuck with Democrats eversince. This year, the party has a new JFK, but the role of religion in politics is as awkwardly apparent as ever.

Unlike John F. Kennedy, John F. Kerry is facing an electorate who increasingly want to know that their leaders’ policy decisions are informed by faith. Despite being a lifelong Catholic, Kerry is struggling to meet those demands in a way that seems sincere. When he was asked in the second presidential debate about tax dollars being used to pay for abortion, Kerry responded that he “can’t take what is an article of faith for [himself] and legislate it for someone who doesn’t share that article of faith, whether they be agnostic, atheist, Jew, Protestant, whatever.” He used a similar approach in the third debate to explain his support of legal rights for same-sex couples despite his “belief that marriage is between a man and a woman”. Kerry’s logic – that personal religious beliefs shouldn’t be codified into public law – seems appropriate for a leader of religiously diverse nation.

Despite the virtues of Kerry’s approach to religion and politics, the weakness of his argument is that abortion and gay marriage aren’t articles of faith in the same way that, for example, a belief in the Trinity is. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Importantly, the Constitution doesn’t prohibit legislation that addresses issues of the public good that happen to coincide with the moral teachings of a religious tradition. Therefore, in the same way that John Kerry invokes his faith to justify his stance on poverty and the environment without violating the Establishment Clause, he could also appropriately invoke his faith to justify legislation that would criminalize abortion. This approach has left Kerry vulnerable to being labeled as a flip-flopper by his opponents.

Unlike Kerry, Republican incumbent George W. Bush does not hesitate to discern public policy in the black-and-white context of his faith. After a disappointing turnout among religious conservatives in the 2000 election, Bush and his staff have specifically crafted his language, policies, and public piety to mobilize that voting bloc. From his proposed Faith-Based Initiatives program to his inaugural address in which Bush alluded to or directly invoked the name of God six times, Bush’s masterful team of speech-writers has woven religious imagery and biblical allusions into the context of every-day issues.

Bush’s campaign staff has adopted a similarly aggressive approach to mobilizing religious voters. Earlier this year, for example, the Bush campaign made headlines after sending out a letter asking supporters to forward their church directories to campaign offices to help build a list of likely supporters for the upcoming election. Despite the protests of conservative and progressive religious leaders, the campaign did not retract its request. Bush’s campaign website also illustrates his strategy for appealing to religious voters. In contrast to John Kerry’s website (www.johnkerry.com), which offers a printable “People of Faith” pamphlet aimed at inclusiveness, community service, social & economic justice, and of course, instructions for planning “People of Faith Potlucks,” President Bush’s website (www.georgewbush.com) separates religious voters into three distinct “Bush-Cheney Coalitions”: the Catholic Team, the Conservative Values Team, and the Jewish Team. Each group’s section of the website pictures prominent religious figures who support the President and offers a printable document that divides issues like traditional marriage, support of Israel, and abortion into two columns entitled, “Bush: Right for Catholics/Conservatives/ the Jewish Community – Kerry: Wrong for Catholics/Conservatives/the Jewish Community.” Not surprisingly, his targeted religious audience has taken his message to heart.

In recent months, three books have been written and a documentary has been produced highlighting President Bush’s Christian faith. Remarking on the Religious Right’s response to Bush’s policies, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC) stated that, “Many have been pleasantly surprised by him in his first few years, and he has been much more appealing to evangelicals.” But like any other special interest, the loyalty of groups such as the FRC isn’t free.

On February 23, 2004, the Washington Times reported on President Bush’s hesitancy to support a constitutional amendment defining marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman. The article cited a chorus of religious conservatives responding to the president’s ambivalence with veiled threats of political mutiny. Bay Buchanan, of the conservative think tank American Cause, stated that Bush’s “hesitancy makes the true believers be concerned that he’s not with us.” Likewise, Gary Bauer, president of American Values, claimed, “There is nothing else on the president’s agenda that comes close to the polling numbers on this, not his economic plan, not Iraq, not government spending, nothing.” Tony Perkins added that “what [President Bush] may have done three years ago is going to be eclipsed by how he responds to this.”

On February 24, 2004, President Bush held a press conference in the Roosevelt Room calling for a constitutional amendment to protect “the institution of marriage.” On marriage and other issues, the president’s religious convictions are almost certainly genuine, but his Administration’s policies and language of faith seem to be motivated more by politics than piety. By suggesting that a voter’s religious affiliation should compel his or her vote, Bush not only ignores the diversity of opinion within religious communities, but more dangerously, he strengthens the claim that a political party can possess the will and authority of God.

At his inauguration, President Bush promised that “when we see that wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, we will not pass by on the other side.” That statement could have been a powerful and prophetic call for Americans, especially those of faith, to start lifting up the downtrodden and oppressed among us. Yet looking back on nearly four years of a widening income gap, an unjustified war in Iraq, under-funded educational mandates, and environmental deregulation, we must ask whether this Administration’s policies have made America more like the Good Samaritan who stopped to care for his neighbor, or more like the robbers who left him stripped and bleeding on the side of the road in the first place.

In this election, we can either vote for an incumbent whose policies brazenly reflect his religion, or a challenger whose policies cautiously reflect his faith. In the sixties, Americans were genuinely concerned that John F. Kennedy would be ultimately accountable to the Pope instead of the people. But at this critical juncture in our history, where militaristic fundamentalism has gained a foothold in the halls of American churches and government, we should be doubly worried that George W. Bush is beholden to the Religious Right. For the sake of our country, our world, and our religions, something has to change.

The answer is not to create a Religious Left. Instead, Democrats and Republicans must acknowledge that good people of faith disagree on issues like abortion and gay marriage. Both parties must stop treating the social views of the Religious Right as though they are the benchmark for all people of faith. Voters must recognize that religious convictions should never be the sole determinant of party affiliation, and that any candidate who uses faith divisively for political gain doesn’t belong in office. When we lose sight of the simple truth that God’s will is neither indebted to, nor possessed by any one person, religion, or political party, we lose sight of God and democracy themselves.

Vol 5. Iss. 1: History of the Catholic Vote

by Francis Borchardt

It’s that time of year again, midfall, when the attention of the United States turns towards the ballot box. It is the time we get to elect our leaders and supposedly influence our government. Elections have often been places where people vote based on commitments to a larger community base or to specific issues. The trajectory of the Catholic vote in U.S. history can be traced clearly along these lines. I would like to offer a brief analysis of how this group of voters has expressed themselves in elections throughout U.S. history.

When Catholics arrived in America, from the 1830s to 1850s, they did not present a compelling political force because of they were relatively small in number. This changed by the mid 1850s, and certainly by 1860, when a more critical mass of Catholic immigrants arrived in the U.S. from Ireland and Germany. These people were discriminated against first as Catholics and second as foreigners. In earlier elections in which Catholics voted, they voted very much en bloc. The Catholic vote skewed towards the Democratic party primarily because the abolitionist Republican Party carried extreme prejudice against the papists. There was distrust amongst the Republicans that one could hold allegience to both the Pope and the United States. As a result, the Democrats took in the Catholic vote, which is interesting because this party was also anti-abolitionist. Given that early conversations about Catholicism in the United States were also conversations about race, it is important to note that in this case, racial discourses were skewed in a different manner than had happened with slavery and the rights of African- Americans in the United States. In this early phase, then, alliance with the Democratic party had little to do with the moral positions of Catholics in the United States. Most Catholics, with notable exceptions like Orestes Brownson and the Archbishop of Cincinnati, were apathetic to slavery and saw in the Democrats a party that would at least accept them. Some, like Brownson and the Archbishop of Cincinnati, voted Republican because of their commitments to abolitionist movements, though.

During the reconstruction era, the Catholic voting bloc continued its alliance with the Democratic party. Despite the racism of this party, the Democrats were looking out for the rights of Catholics, who had still not found acceptance in the American culture. Republicans still distrusted them, and it was felt overlooked them to help the new freedmen throughout the country. The anti-Catholic sentiment was so strong in the U.S. that even President Grant often made comments about the next big struggle after slavery being the fight between those who believe in superstitions (Catholics) and those who have a rational and democratic religious base.

Strong political alliances with the Democratic party continued through the First World War and into Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency. By this time, through the changes within the Democratic Party, American Catholic allegiance to the party became about a shared social teachings as well as historical acceptance from and voting patterns within the party. Anti-Catholic sentiment amongst Republicans remained strong in this era, though they were still firmly committed to addressing some of the effects of slavery in the United States. The Catholic voting block reached its height under F.D.R.; through the New Deal, Catholics identified a president who was committed to tenents shared in their social teaching and who addressed issues of poverty in their lives.

Partly because of FDR’s success in helping them, and partly because of their history and growth in the U.S., Catholics gained a degree of acceptance in the country after the 1940s. As with many groups who vote according to party affiliation when they are not fully integrated into US culture, assimilation into dominant cultures in the United States diminished the potency of the Catholic vote. There was a small resurgence of bloc voting during Kennedy’s election when American Catholics were confronted with both lingering anti-Catholic sentiments and a signal that this anti- Catholicism was more fleeting than in previous decades. By Kennedy’s time, however, Catholics lost many of the cultural differences that made them distrusted by WASPs. Since then, Catholics have freely voted according to individual beliefs, without regard for party affiliation. They do not largely organize to protect the rights of Catholic voters because they no longer exist as a distinct cultural group. The richest demographic in the U.S. are Irish Catholics, and with full one half of U.S. governors, and one third of both U.S. representatives and senators being Catholic in our own time, it is safe to say that Catholics have arrived. The most interesting part is that these Catholics reside on both sides of the political aisle.

Vol 5. Iss. 1: Beyond the Polls

by Natalie Noel Keefe

“Nothing’s perfect.” In a committee hearing, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified that, this upcoming January, voting may not be an option for Iraqis living in areas with the most concentrated violence. Yet as the death-toll rises for the fourth consecutive month, both majorparty candidates, President George W. Bush (R) and Senator John Kerry (D-MA) seem to have been avoiding the question everyone wants answered: Is the US public willing to accept the consequences of our past, present, and future actions regarding the presidential elections and the war in Iraq?

Let’s take a look at history. In 1964, when there were alleged attacks on the US by North Vietnamese gunboats, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Lyndon B. Johnson the power to resolve the conflict by any means necessary. Similarly, weapons of mass destruction were the false pretenses under which Congress gave current President Bush the carte blanche to invade Iraq. So soldiers were sent over in anxiety, and returned shrouded in secrecy. Sydney H. Schanberg from The Village Voice noted, “Soldiers’ parents went on the open market back home to buy state-of-the-art body vests with ceramic-plate reinforcement…” Cameras were banned from the Dover, Delaware, site where “transfer tubes” (the Administration’s glossy term for body bags) of American G.I.’s are sent. “The Dover test,” the American public’s tolerance for wartime fatalities, has increased. The psychological frame “if we don’t see it, it must not exist” has proven key to the Administration’s success. In light of the past, do we think of the Iraqis’ struggle on the ground every day? In reality, we have little idea what it’s really like.

But Hannah Allam does. Ms. Allam, the Baghdad bureau chief for Knight-Ridder Newspapers, knows about the present situation because she has lived in Iraq since the invasion. She is alarmed by Rumsfeld’s pat answer that marking off a couple of major provinces for elections would be no big deal – when, in fact, it would disenfranchise a large segment of the Iraqi population. Similarly, if our own Secretary of Defense thinks any election (even an unrepresentative one), is a good election, what does that say about the quality of our elections here in the good ol’ USA, much less the Bush Administration? And what of the draft? By March 31st, 2005, the President wants “the decks [cleared] for a first lottery by June 15th, 2005.”

When Hannah Allam looks outside her balcony in Baghdad, the texture of her world is uncanny. She sees “razor wire…thick concrete walls . . . children playing . . . Iraqis eating ice cream drowned out by the rumble of a tank.” How many young Americans’ lives must end in violence and secrecy? How many children must die from bombings in Baghdad? Will we be thinking of both sets of the dead when we walk into the booths on November 2nd, or just the former – or perhaps neither? More than anything, this election may really be about the just right of the governed to act when we disagree with faulty foreign policy concerning our future as citizens of the world.

Vol 5. Iss. 1: Defiant Connectedness: Same-Sex Marriage in This Election

by Michelle Cherry-Slack

Despite it being one of the coldest days of the season last year, I remember there being a warmth among those gathered. It was March 18, 2004, and my lovely bride, Montel, and I were all dressed up in our Sunday best, ready to sacramentally affirm, for the second time, our love before God. Two other couples waited patiently (and a little bit nervously, I suspect) with us for that moment to arrive. Then, without a lot of fanfare, more than 60 clergy members from various denominations, many of whom were Union alums, stood fully vested, shoulder to shoulder, on the steps of City Hall in New York City to demand that the State of New York set a new standard for marriage equality in this country.

March 18th was certainly not the first time community leaders had spoken out for equal justice for our various Queer communities: civil rights activists have publicly advocated for the legal recognition of same-sex marriage since as early as the 1970s. However, during the past four years – the period from the last presidential election to this one – this struggle for equality has both gained ground and become a wedge issue defining camps on the left and right. Beginning in Vermont and Hawaii in 2000, same-sex unions have been legally recognized, challenged, or expressly prohibited in some way in nearly every state. The US Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas accelerated this movement, which reached a feverpitch after the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ordered the state to cease denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Similar cases are now pending before several state supreme courts. On the other hand, 18 states have or will decide this election season whether to prohibit same-sex unions in their constitutions.

In the midst of this activity, for several weeks in early 2004, local government officials and clergy persons in San Francisco, California, Portland, Oregon, and several towns in New York and New Jersey began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples and solemnizing our marriages. They all took these steps with the threat of arrest looming; several of them, in fact, were. Although all of these marriages are now mired in a judicial process that will take years to sort out, the officials who performed them, whether or not they acted for religious reasons, helped force an issue of God’s love out of the closet – and for this, they are to be commended.

And in the midst of so much courage and witness, the current president has advocated writing discrimination into the U.S. Constitution by denying the recognition of marriage to anyone other than “one man and one woman.” It was a sad day because he positioned himself squarely opposite the Supreme Court’s majority opinion that “[a]s the Constitution endures, persons in every generation [should] invoke its principles in...search of greater freedom” (Lawrence v. Texas, 539 US___). It was a sad day because he scape-goated an entire group of people to distract a nation from his own failings as president, used that group to appeal to his core constituency, and did so with a false promise of an amendment that has little chance of passing in the next four years, regardless of who is elected. It was, finally, a sad day because the ultimate source of authority he claimed (as a Christian no less!) in denying same-sex love, was the same God whom the Bible names Love, and names everyone who loves as God’s own.

As Montel and I stood in line at the City Clerk’s office, knowing we’d be denied a marriage license application, and as we stood on the steps of City Hall before all the clergy members and all the press, we kept going back to the same questions. Why should we have to do this? Shouldn’t our love be given the same legal recognition as that of any other couple? Why is love not given the same respect in the law as issues of money or power? Why is it that a heterosexual couple can meet on the subway at 7 a.m. and receive a marriage license by 9 a.m., while the four years of love and growth Montel and I have shared does not hold enough weight to receive the 1,040 or so rights that so many heterosexual couples take for granted?

The answer to these questions is strikingly simple: there are those in power who absolutely do not believe in sharing the wealth of life and love that this nation has to offer. But what they fail to recognize is that every single one of us is a child of God and will be seated at the banquet table of life. That’s the promise Jesus makes. And this is the reason why marriage equality, or equal treatment of every sort, is important. It’s the reason why providing adequate HIV/AIDS medications to people of other countries is important. It’s why taking seriously the needs of the impoverished in this country is important. We are all connected . . . all of us, no matter what we each believe or how we each choose to worship. This basic idea should impact how we engage each other and the choices we make everyday, no less than the policies and decisions made in our name.

After all the couples said “I do” that day, it occurred to me that we weren’t just affirming the lives we are building together. We were also affirming God’s promise of human community. We, as well as the clergy, public officials and media present, were affirming our connectedness as a varied people. We were affirming the strength and breadth of our shared existence in this world, a connectedness that has been too willfully ignored, in large and small ways, over the past four years. Whatever the outcome of November 2, the struggle for same-sex unions will continue to be wrapped up in a broader struggle to create new bonds within our society and with our world. I, and all of us, can and must courageously pray and prayerfully act for a more wholehearted living out of our connectedness, in matters of politics, religion, and most certainly, in matters of love.

Vol 5. Iss. 1: Union's Refusal: The Poor Shall NOT Be Forgotton

by Liz Theoharis

During the keynote address at Union’s Alumni Days, Jack Nelson Pallmeyer discussed the importance of the presidential election this year but noted that all the country’s and world’s problems would not be solved by electing John Kerry. He asserted this is because neither candidate is discussing the critical issue of poverty nor offering solutions to this critical issue. Instead the discussion during the lead up to the election has been faith, war, and foreign policy. But while US foreign policy finds us engaged in conflicts in different parts of the world, there is an unreported but deadly war going on within our own borders. This war on America’s poor and working families has left many in the US without basic economic human rights to food, housing, healthcare, education and living wage jobs. Over the past four years, our conditions have worsened:

• there are now over 31 million Americans living in poverty;
• 12.2 million children in our nation are poor, with over 1.35 million of them homeless;
• over 43 million Americans have no healthcare; and
• there are currently almost 10 million unemployed Americans.

Part of the reason that this war on the poor continues is that their suffering has been made invisible. The poor have been made to disappear from not only the welfare rolls and the workforce, but from the media and the political debates. Stories of the poor are not told and images of the poor are not seen. This invisibility has allowed for the situation of the poor to be ignored by our politicians, who have not placed a priority on addressing the increasing number of poor families in worsening conditions. Economic human rights need to be a priority over the next four years, or many people who have been abandoned by both political parties simply will not make it.

While pressing issues here at home have taken a backseat to foreign policy debates in the months leading up to this election, poor people nevertheless have been working to make their issues and voices heard. David, who is a leader from Poor People United, an organization of homeless families in Rochester, NY, asserted, “Somebody has to say something about the situation that is happening not only locally but nationally. The poor can’t afford to be silenced now or ever.” So on the opening day of the Republican National Convention (RNC), The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC), a network of over 100 poor people’s organizations nationally (including Poor People United) who are building a movement to endpoverty, marched from the United Nations to the doors of RNC. The PPEHRC brought a message of the economic human rights to housing, healthcare, living wage jobs and education to Madison Square Garden on August 30th. They will continue to bring this message to the entire nation after November 2nd, until poverty has been ended.

Union Theological Seminary is one of the places where this message has come in earnest. Over the past year, administration, faculty members, students, alumni, and community leaders have been planning a multi-faceted program – The Poverty Initiative at Union. The program for 2004-2005 includes both a Scholar in Residence and community events concerning poverty, including a “Poverty Truth Commission” in the spring of 2005. This year’s Scholar in Residence is Willie Baptist, a leader in the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign and the growing movement led by the poor to end poverty in this country.

Our religious traditions call for the elimination of poverty, not simply reducing, alleviating or managing it; and yet our society and religious communities are not outraged or in action about the growing polarization between wealth and poverty. A survey conducted of 30 major U.S. seminaries discovered that few offer courses in economic justice, despite our biblical and ecclesial traditions that place major emphasis on justice for poor people. Few seminaries build direct relationships between poor people and the religious leaders that they educate.

At Union, we plan to change all this. We are not going to continue to ignore the moral crisis of poverty, but plan to integrate themes of poverty and leaders of poor people’s organizations in the curriculum and community life at Union. The Poverty Initiative is not a caucus, student group, or faculty committee; it is a movement across the seminary’s community to make poverty a central concern in the teaching, research, action, and life of the institution.

The spiraling issue of poverty and the growing movement to end poverty is another opportunity for Union Theological Seminary to challenge our religious institutions and the society at large around urgent social injustices and to help mobilize an array of communities towards economic justice. As Union’s new mission statement reads, “Union graduates will practice their vocations with dedication to the mission of the churches and leadership in the academy and society, ever seeking to bring a religious and moral voice to discussions of major social and political issues.” By focusing on Union Theological Seminary, with its national reputation for social justice, we have the possibility of influencing not only the Union community throughout the city and the nation, but also seminaries across the U.S. that follow Union’s lead. Regardless of who is elected on November 2nd, Union Theological Seminary cannot miss the chance to join the fight to end poverty. And the Poverty Initiative at Union will continue to push this seminary to respond to the cry of the poor and ensure that all have the rights to housing, health care, living wage jobs, education, and food: “all this we do in response to God’s justice and love.”

Vol 5. Iss. 1: Contributers

Francis Borchardt is a senior MA student who would like to remind you: when you write, do it responsibly, and always with a designated reader.

Michelle Cherry-Slack is a first-year in Union's MDiv. A deacon in the Metropolitan Community Church of New York, she is in formation for ordination. When she had free time, she loved to sing and dance in clubs throughout the city. Now she just studies.

Justin Latterall, originally from Colorado, is a first-year MDiv at Union, interested in the connections between religious and political life in the US.

Liz Theoharis completed her MDiv at Union last spring, and entered the Seminary’s PhD program this fall. She is one of the co-founders of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, and co-coordinator of the University of the Poor.

Hannah Giffin is a first year MDiv student.

Natalie Noel Keefe is a first-year MDiv from Chicago. She has a BA in Spanish from North Park University. Favorite things include the humanities, chocolate, and world peace.