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Continuing to Highlight Our Gifted Student Ambassadors By Rev. Margot Perez-Greene, Ph.D. We come to the last in the series of introducing our Student Ambassadors who have served well in recruitment activities during a complicated and uncertain time in the history of theological education. We applaud their efforts to come forth amid their challenges of navigating new educational delivery systems, stressors caused by the pandemic, uncertainties in their ministries, and curiosity about what the “new normal” will look like. [...]

On April 13, Perkins School of Theology will be part of SMU Giving Day, a time of commitment and celebration.  This once-a-year, 24-hour philanthropic blitz rallies Mustangs everywhere for one big day of fundraising. SMU Giving Day is a funding lifeline to many initiatives, at Perkins and beyond.  Many of the causes on campus rely on Giving Day to meet their financial goals.  Because of the pandemic, last year’s Giving Day was suspended.  We hope that this year’s event [...]

On March 11, the world marked the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the COVID pandemic – the day in 2020 when the World Health Organization officially declared COVID as a worldwide pandemic. And what a year it has been. Classes moved to remote or hybrid formats. Students and faculty began wearing masks everywhere. Most large gatherings were cancelled. When people did gather in person, seating was spaced out to allow social distancing. Now, with vaccinations rolling out across [...]

Perkins students who graduated in December 2019, May 2020 or August 2020 are invited to participate in the May 2021 graduation ceremonies, which take place May 14-15 on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The deadline to RSVP to participate is April 16. Because the 2020 commencement ceremony was deferred until August 2020, and many graduates from the 2019-20 academic year were unable to attend in August 2020, Perkins and Southern Methodist University have extended the invitation [...]

Members of the Black Seminarians Association (BSA) at Perkins School of Theology will host the annual Seven Last Words service on Good Friday, April 2, beginning at 7 p.m. The service will take place live via webinar.   The special Good Friday service is an African American tradition woven around the last utterances of Christ before his death on the cross.  Five years ago, the BSA hosted its inaugural Seven Last Words service at St. Luke “Community” UMC, and now it’s quickly becoming [...]

The Perkins community is invited to join an online panel, “Words Matter:  The Intersectionality of Race, Religion and Public Policy” at 7 p.m. on April 19, 2021.  The Zoom webinar is sponsored by Perkins School of Theology’s Center for the Study of Latino/a Christianity and Religions and the Department of World Languages and Literature at Dedman School of the Humanities and Sciences. For details, read the press release here and see the flyer here.

Attendees traveled virtually, from 12 different states and one Canadian province, for “a day of seminary” at the Perkins Summit for Faith & Learning, held online March 19-20. With the theme “Looking Forward, Learning Together,” the program offered courses taught by five members of the Perkins faculty and an alumnus and was attended by a total of 133 people. The Perkins Summit — formerly the Perkins Theological School for the Laity – has been held annually for several decades. [...]

Op-Ed on Asian Hate Crimes A short piece by Sze-kar Wan on the Atlanta murders recently appeared in Church Anew. “We don’t need legal jargons to tell us this is an anti-Asian hate crime,” he wrote. “We just know it. From experience and from history.” He cited examples of injustices against Asian Americans: violence against Chinese miners during the gold rush of the nineteenth century; the Page Law of 1875; the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; the 1887 Hells Canyon [...]

Ally Drummond’s favorite Bible verse is Micah 6:8: What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?  The verse captures the sense of calling which ultimately brought her to Perkins, where she’s now a second year M.Div. student. “Micah 6:8 brought to light my desire to combine my passion for faith with my passion for social justice,” she said. “The more I focused on this verse, [...]