The Wells Sermons

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

Rev. Cody Sanders, Ph.D.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Hannah Arendt warned of the role that “organized loneliness” played in the rise of totalitarianism in Germany. Abolitionist geographer Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a 2023 advisory warning of “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation” in the U.S., adversely affecting nearly every metric of wellbeing, from cardiovascular health and dementia to depression and anxiety.

Loneliness causes harm on individual, communal, political, and ecological scales, causing injuries that have adverse effects on the health of both humans and the wider web of life. In this lecture, Cody Sanders will address these concerns of harm alongside the ways that relational and communal practices can increase health and the potential for healing on multiple levels of belonging: to God, to one another in human community, and to the larger ecological web of life. In this pursuit, the lecture will move us toward a constructive praxis of relational hope amid the traumas of loneliness in our current era.

The Gilbert & Hilda Davis Workshop in Ministry

“Interrupting the Spin”: Biblical Interpretation as Hopeful Activism

Dr. Ericka S. Dunbar

In her presentation, Dunbar discusses collective traumas depicted in Esther 1-2, particularly focusing on the sexual trafficking of African girls. She argues that using an intersectionality framework and considering multiple voices (even silenced ones) can reveal hidden systemic inequalities. This approach highlights marginalized and minoritized people in biblical texts and their interpretations. Dunbar also shows how interpreting the Bible can be used for hopeful activism.

The McFadin Lecture

Reckoning with Our Pasts: A Psychospirituality of Intergenerational Trauma

Rev. Jill Snodgrass, Ph.D.

The imprint of stress and trauma shapes the lives of individuals and communities and can cascade through subsequent generations. A psychospirituality of intergenerational trauma offers a pathway to reckon with our pasts as well as a corrective to Western biomedical conceptions that largely negate the way trauma can engender not only great suffering but resistance and the possibility of growth.

Tuesday Workshops

• T1. Soul Repair: Moral Injury with Rev. Dr. Nancy J. Ramsay

• T2. Trauma from a Psychological Perspective with Dr. Caitlyn Hord

• T 3. Lessons on The Way: Insights from “Scripture and the Civil Rights Travel Seminar” with Rev. Jeremy William, Ph.D.

Wednesday Workshops

• W1. Self-care and Trauma in Health Care with Dr. Griselle Batista

• W2. Depression and Me: A Clergyperson Gets Real About Mental Health with Rev. Dr. Katie Hayes

• W3. Utilizing Contemplative Spiritualities as Models for Transformation in Caring Professions with Rev. Tomeka Jacobs, Ph.D.