Ministry Week 2025
Restoring the Soul: From Trauma to Hope
February 10-12, 2025
University Christian Church
The Wells Preacher
The Rev. Serene Jones, Ph.D.
The Rev. Serene Jones, Ph.D. is the 16th President of the historic Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. The first woman to head the 186-year-old institution, Jones occupies the Johnston Family Chair for Religion and Democracy. She is a Past President of the American Academy of Religion, which annually hosts the world’s largest gathering of scholars of religion. Jones came to Union after seventeen years at Yale University, where she was the Titus Street Professor of Theology at the Divinity School, and Chair of the University’s Program in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is the author of several books including Trauma and Grace and, most recently, her memoir Call It Grace: Finding Meaning in a Fractured World. Jones, a popular public speaker, is sought by media to comment on major issues impacting society because of her deep grounding in theology, politics, women’s studies, economics, race studies, history, and ethics.
The Scott Lecture
The Trauma of Loneliness
The Rev. Cody J. Sanders, Ph.D., an alum of Brite Divinity School, currently serves as Associate Professor of Congregational and Community Care Leadership at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN. Prior to Luther, Cody served as Pastor to Old Cambridge Baptist Church in Cambridge, MA, where he was also American Baptist Chaplain to Harvard University and Advisor for LGBTQ+ Affairs in the Office of Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has published a number of books, including, Corpse Care: Ethics for Tending the Dead with Mikeal Parsons (Fortress, 2023), Christianity, LGBTQ Suicide, and the Souls of Queer Folk (Lexington, 2020), and A Brief Guide to Ministry with LGBTQIA Youth (Westminster, 2017). His forthcoming book with Fortress Press, out in Spring of 2025, is titled Spiritual Care First-Aid: An All-Hands Approach for Church and Community.
The Gilbert & Hilda Davis Workshop in Ministry
"Interpreting the Spin": Biblical Interpretation as Hopeful Activism
Dr. Ericka S. Dunbar is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Baylor University. Her area of research focuses broadly on gender, ethnicity, violence, intersectional oppression, sexual(ized) abuse, colonialism, trauma, and diasporic studies. More specifically, she engages in intersectional analyses of sexualized, gender-based, and colonial oppression in the Hebrew Bible. Her first book, Trafficking Hadassah: Collective Trauma, Cultural Memory, and Identity in the Book of Esther and the African Diaspora (Routledge, 2022) is based on her doctoral dissertation and is a dialogical cultural study of sexual trafficking in the book of Esther and during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. In this project, Dr. Dunbar analyzes how ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, and colonialism intersect and interact in instances of sexual trafficking both in ancient and contemporary contexts.
The McFadin Lecture
Reckoning with Our Pasts: A Psychospirituality of Intergenerational Trauma
The Rev. Jill L. Snodgrass, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola University Maryland. She is a pastoral and practical theologian, a scholar-activist, and an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. Her research focuses on spiritual care and counseling with traditionally marginalized populations. She is the editor of Navigating Religious Difference in Spiritual Care and Counseling (Claremont Press, 2019), the author of Women Leaving Prison: Justice-Seeking Spiritual Support for Female Returning Citizens (Lexington, 2018), and the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles and chapters. Dr. Snodgrass has served as a pastoral counselor in churches, shelters, transitional housing facilities, and community centers, and she is the Clinical Director of Spiritual Support at Greater Baltimore Medical Center.