VDS Voices

Individuals in a population that is often overlooked or misunderstood shared their lived experiences during a speaker series on the Vanderbilt campus Oct. 24 to commemorate Intersex Awareness Day. Intersex people are born with differences in sex traits or reproductive anatomy. The phenomenon is as common as having red… Read More

Distinguished Alumni Celebration at Vanderbilt Divinity School Friday Nov. 8, 2024, in Nashville, TN. (L to R) Rev. Dr. J. Bennett Guess, Rev. Dr. George Williamson, Jr. (Photo: Larry McCormack) Two Vanderbilt alumni who devoted their lives to ministry, social justice and activism have been recognized as the 2024 Vanderbilt… Read More

Vanderbilt Divinity School alumni who helped bring historic shifts to the United Methodist Church’s stances on sexuality credit a variety of learning experiences—in the classroom and in field education—for their preparedness as agents of social justice. Carter Ellis, MDiv, ’13, was selected as a delegate to the UMC General… Read More

Recognizing the significant suicidality, post-traumatic stress, depression and moral injury endured by active military and veteran populations, Vanderbilt Divinity School has partnered with Integrative Mental Health, a national program of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, to prepare chaplains for contemporary care challenges. “With our appropriate focus… Read More

…Our default ways of seeing are all too often complicit with cultural biases like racism, sexism, ableism, and trans- and homophobia. This isn’t necessarily intentional but reflects our own formation by the systems that gave rise to these biases. Ellen T. Armour, Seeing and Believing: Religion, Digital Visual Culture, and… Read More

Here is the beginning of  Professor Douglas Knight’s most recent article: Raised in a Baptist family that valued diversity and social justice, educated during the 1960s period of anti-war student unrest, Vanderbilt Divinity School professor emeritus reflects on higher education, critical thinking, and belief. When faced with expansive debates and… Read More

Divinity School Commencement Celebration. Delivered by Dean Emilie Townes, Emerita May 12, 2023 each year, i am reminded that you and i (and countless others) are often called to ministry in the midst of the senselessness of our worlds now some folks would say that this is depressing a downer somewhat despairing… Read More

Excerpt from “Blacks and Jews, Again”, a New York Times opinion guest essay by Michael Eric Dyson: “. . . Ye, the hip-hop artist and fashion designer formerly known as Kanye West, has unleashed a rash of antisemitic tirades, and the Brooklyn Nets basketball superstar Kyrie Irving posted on social… Read More

Congratulations to two Vanderbilt Divinity School professors, Michael Eric Dyson and Peter Lake, for their promotions to University Distinguished Professors! Congratulations to Michael Eric Dyson on his promotion to University Distinguished Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies in the Vanderbilt University College of Arts and Science and University Distinguished Professor… Read More

West Southern Pines School A reflection from our dean, Emilie M. Townes, for November 2022: When I was a little Black kid growing up in a very traditional Black transclass community in Durham, NC, and in my grandmother’s working class, Black community in West Southern Pines, NC, about 75 miles… Read More