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Profile
Hometown: Greenbelt, MD
Major: Doctor of Ministry
Post-graduate plans: My ministry has changed while at LTS. I arrived with a mature ministry to address crisis and trauma in Quaker Homes and Meetings. As I find myself in my final year, my ministry is often supported by other ministers in my tradition.
Why did you choose Lancaster Theological Seminary? I was really impressed with LTS’ focus on ethnography as a pastoral practice. LTS emphasizes storytelling, listening, and creative ways of knowing and being in the world, which was very attractive to me. I was looking for an experiential, permission-giving environment where I could deepen both my scholarship and my ministry practice.
What accomplishments or achievements are you most proud of? With the support of LTS, I had the opportunity in 2022-23 to be a fellow of Odyssey Impact, a faith-based non-governmental organization (NGO) that emphasizes story as a means to justice. We traveled to Europe, Egypt, and the American South. Our interfaith cohort was tight! I would have never had this opportunity without LTS.
My major project is on what Quakers call the “right relationship,” especially among American Quakers engaged in “public ministry.” Quakers believe we are all ministers, of course, but some travel, teach and otherwise serve in focused ways. Unfortunately, these public ministers are under-supported because of cultural taboos specific to Quakers.
This project’s research has been the backbone of some of the work I am most proud of and look forward to completing in the popular sphere. As I have explored the questions that make up my major project, I have created new collaborations between theologically and culturally diverse Quaker organizations, and I am actively making a difference in how Quakers perceive themselves and the prophetic imagination.
How have you been called to serve? In the last academic year, I was featured on a video series called QuakerSpeak, the third most-watched video of the same period, speaking on Healing From Abuse in Quaker Communities. This is a hard topic for anyone, and especially for Quakers who, because of a belief in our innate virtuousness as a sign that we belong, often do not pay much attention to interpersonal violence in our homes and Meetings.
I also gave the Quaker Institute Keynote Address last spring on Provocation to Love: A Prophetic Future for Friends. I discussed misunderstanding our history, trauma and repair, and prophetic imagination.
I presented original qualitative research with elder researchers on sexual violence against women clergy at the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and Religious Research Association conference this past fall. It is the first ecumenical study of sexual violence against clergy and the first study of sexual violence to include Quakers since the mid-1980s. We are submitting again with updated research to academic conferences this year.
While I have traveled a lot and worked with many communities, even across faith differences, in the last year, I am most proud of the ministry work I have begun on the support of Quaker public ministry, coming right out of my scholarly work at LTS. I have written a popular series on public ministry that is at once challenging and well-received.
I am also serving as convener for a series of five public events that involve the cooperation of four very different Quaker organizations for the revitalized support of public ministry.
Favorite class: There was a class on trauma. I don’t remember the name of it, but it rocked my world. Seminaries need to teach more content on trauma, which is so prevalent in our world and lives.
Favorite author: Judith Herman
Favorite Bible verse: 1 Corinthians 4:20: “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.”
Thank You
“I am grateful that LTS exists and is doing brave work in the church. The support I have been given by faculty while I do some hard change work on myself and in my context has surprised me, given that I am a Quaker, already an odd duck at many seminaries, and I am an odd duck of a Quaker, however visible. Quakers often think no one understands them. We might like it that way sometimes. But I have felt profoundly understood, seen, and cared for at LTS. I have learned so much about being part of a larger church that I would have never had access to if I had stayed in my own context. Thank you for your support!”