Photo by York Wilson

New Ministries for Racial Reconciliation

Multiple ties bind efforts by Mississippi and Duke Divinity School to create a promising collaboration for ministries of racial reconciliation.

The program’s roots date from 2003, when Bishop Kenneth Carder—now director of the Duke Center for Excellence in Ministry—convened an Urban Task Group for the Mississippi Annual Conference.

At the time, the Rev. Joey Shelton D’97 was pastor of Court Street UMC, a century-old Hattiesburg church that he had helped transform into a racially, socio-economically and theologically diverse congregation. “Bishop Carder asked me to chair the group because of his familiarity with the diversity and intentional efforts of Court Street,” says Shelton.

A year later, in the summer of 2004, Carder was succeeded as bishop of the Mississippi episcopacy by Hope Morgan Ward, a 1978 divinity school alumna. She and Dean L. Gregory Jones quickly recognized an opportunity for further collaboration between the school and the Mississippi Conference.

“Convergences took place as Bishop Ward and the dean and other divinity leaders connected all of the dots,” says Shelton. He and his wife, Connie, also D’97, moved from Mississippi to Durham at the beginning of 2005 to become co-directors of field education and church relations at Duke. The Sheltons, both natives of Mississippi, arranged the summer placements for the students.

Organizers say the effort will benefit the Mississippi Conference and the divinity school, as well as the individual students, who will be known as Warren Pittman Scholars.

Two Pittman Scholars, Lettye Smith and Kent Dunington, will serve this summer at Galloway United Methodist Church in Jackson with the Rev. Ross Olivier. The former General Secretary of The Methodist Church of Southern Africa and a prominent leader in the struggle against apartheid, Olivier was appointed to Galloway last June by Bishop Carder.

The students will work with the “Light on a Hill,” Galloway’s cooperative project in a blighted area of inner-city Jackson with Voice of Calvary Ministry. (Two other connections: Olivier worked with divinity professor Peter Storey in South Africa; Voice of Calvary is where Chris Rice D’04 spent 17 years working for racial reconciliation.)

Mississippi, says Carder, is a microcosm of the world in terms of racial polarization and economic disparity. “The divinity school can help the church in Mississippi understand and live the Gospel more deeply, and Mississippi can help form students and faculty with experiences of racial reconciliation.”

Bishop Ward looks forward to the divinity students’ gifts of calling, openness, energy and creativity. In Mississippi, she says, they will find people seeking “to walk in the light of Christ.

“We will gather to hear the stories of those who have been hurt by injustice and those who have offered prophetic leadership, those who are encouraged and those who are discouraged,” says Bishop Ward. “We will create ministries that challenge the darkness of racism and offer the light of reconciliation.”

— Claire Cusick