Building on the unique strengths and commitments of Duke Divinity School, the TMC Initiative pursues two primary goals:

• To invite seminarians, clergy, students in the health professions, and practicing clinicians to deep theological study and formation in the context of a community of shared prayer, dialogue, and friendship at Duke Divinity School.

  Whether called to a vocation in the church or in the health professions, students will learn to bring the traditions of Christian thought and practice to bear on contemporary medicine. Clergy and ministerial students will be better equipped to navigate the complex terrain of modern medicine in the context of faithful Christian ministry, and health care practitioners will be empowered to reimagine and reengage their work as vocation.

• To cultivate creative practices regarding health and medicine that emerge from a scriptural imagination, engagement with the living Christian tradition, and attention to and reflection on contemporary contexts.

  We seek to build collaborations among Christian communities, health care practitioners, and health care institutions that will reimagine how medicine might be practiced in an array of particular contexts. Through these collaborations, communities will find theologically rich ways to support and sustain health practitioners and laypeople in the hard work of attending the sick, will pioneer new models for the care of those who are poor or marginalized, and will develop new vocabularies that transform the ways Christians understand and make use of medicine faithfully.