Emory University's Candler School of Theology has received a $4.5 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to continue building the doctoral program in religious practices and practical theology. The award follows an earlier Lilly Endowment grant to Candler in 2002 of $10 million that founded the program, which is changing and strengthening the training of a new generation of ministers and religious leaders.
"In six years Emory has helped reshape the landscape of graduate education in religion and theology," says Emory Provost Earl Lewis. "We have become recognized as one of the leading university-based practical theology programs in the country."
Jan Love, dean of Candler School of Theology, says that "with this continued support from Lilly Endowment, Emory will have a profound impact on the way theology and religion are taught, and in turn, the way ministers and religious leaders are educated in the future."
The grant will continue to build Emory's cohort of new PhDs in religious practices and practical theology in the Graduate Division of Religion. The program's current enrollment is 33, with more growth expected with the entrance of this year's doctoral class, says Elizabeth Bounds, who directed the program for the past six years, alongside administering the Graduate Division of Religion.
These new PhDs will be in high demand, says Bounds, because of a shortage of well-trained scholars in ministerial and practical fields and because today's ministers and religious leaders need instruction from a new kind of faculty. "The program trains future faculty not only in fields such as religious education and pastoral care, but also in systematic theology and ethics so that faculty members all across the curriculum are able to teach and do research about the ways people live out their faith."
"Theological seminaries across the country are working hard to develop new, more effective ways to prepare their students to be excellent pastors," says Craig Dykstra, senior vice president for religion at the Lilly Endowment. "Emory University and its Candler School of Theology are at the vanguard of this effort. The new doctoral program in religious practices and practical theology is helping theological education as a whole to reconceive the ways theology and ministry are thought and taught, while also producing a very talented and much-needed new generation of scholar-educators who are well-prepared to teach and lead in new ways."
"Doctoral work in religion and theology has generally been text-based," says Thomas Frank, a colleague of Bounds who is directing the program going forward. "We've discovered that doctoral education comes alive in new ways when students come into contact with actual, contemporary faith communities."
He cites as an example the issue of social justice. "Reading a book about justice is critical, and the concept takes off in new directions when students see a justice ministry in action, when they see a congregation that sends people to vigils at a prison's death row. Suddenly justice is not an abstraction anymore. Seeing religious practices in action adds a whole new dimension to doctoral studies."
The program also includes a post-doctoral fellowship, which allows recent PhDs to spend a year reorienting their research and teaching toward engagement with religious practices.
"The feedback from students here has spread to other schools," says Bounds, adding that Emory has become known "as a very creative and desirable place to do graduate study in religion and theology."
Emory PhD candidate Ben Stewart, who was hired this fall as an instructor in worship at Lutheran School of Theology (LST) in Chicago, says Emory's approach to the religious practices program was a gift "that pushed me out from textual study and got me into congregations." He spent time "seeing how people are constructing theological meaning as they participate in worship."
That kind of background, says Stewart, made him an attractive hire at LST. "There will be growing demand for PhD graduates who speak this language and have been trained this way."
November 2008
