The public is invited to join Richmond Symphony Orchestra, Earlham College, Earlham School of Religion and the Bethany Theological Seminary for an intimate evening of music and reflection on Sunday, Dec. 10.

“Seeking Peace: A Time of Centering,” begins at 4:30 p.m. at Nicarry Chapel on the Bethany Theological Seminary campus located at 615 National Road W. in Richmond. The event is free, but seating is limited. Reservations can be made on Earlham College’s Eventbrite page. In case attendance exceeds the capacity of Nicarry, a live video feed will be available in the Bethany Gathering Area.

“The approaching holiday season is a joyous occasion for many, but it can also be a time of grief for people who are experiencing hardships or grappling with the weight of global events,” said Monica Koechlein, executive director of Richmond Symphony Orchestra. “We invite our community to join us to pause, reflect and pray for our world.”

A trio of musicians from the Richmond Symphony Orchestra will play the cello, harp and flute during the hourlong event. Readings and moments of stillness led by members of the RSO, Earlham and Bethany communities will complement the musical selections.

“With all the turmoil and strife in the world, Bethany is fortunate to have the opportunity to open our doors and welcome the larger community to join us for an event focused on peace and hope,” said Jeff Carter, president of Bethany Theological Seminary.

“We are thankful to our friends at Richmond Symphony Orchestra and Earlham for joining us in sponsoring this important event,” he said. “It is so important to pause for moments of beauty and reflection during times of war and conflict. We hope this event will be a positive experience for people of all faiths and backgrounds.”

After the program, opportunities for fellowship and reflection — including refreshments and a candlelit labyrinth walk — will be offered indoors and in the courtyard adjoining the Bethany and ESR campuses.

“As we continue to grapple with violence and other forms of oppression in today’s world, we are reminded of our commitment to being a beacon of light and love for our community,” said Gretchen Castle, dean of the Earlham School of religion. “As we promote deep thinking and spiritual well-being, we welcome the community to be inspired by music and to join in this celebration of life.  

“We hear that resilience is dependent on optimism, and so our hope lies in our ability to join together in community to grieve, to share, to consider the blessings of life.  Let us know we are not alone.  Please join us as we bring light to our corner of the world.” 

Gretchen Castle was officially installed as the seventh dean — and first woman dean — of the Earlham School of Religion on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023.

During a ceremony attended by Earlham community members and dignitaries from other seminaries, Castle marked the occasion by sharing a vision for how ESR will change a divided world. She took inspiration from ESR’s founders and again in the establishment of the seminary’s Quaker Leadership Center, which supports congregational leaders and encourage students to pursue careers in congregational ministry.

“ESR was established out of, or rather in spite of, the differences among Friends,” Castle said at the ceremony held at Nicarry Chapel, located on the campus of Bethany Seminary, ESR’s sister seminary, partner and neighbor.

“Diversity of feeling around training people for ministry, whether from the pastoral system or the unprogrammed tradition, was rife with disagreement,” Castle explained. “This bridging of Quaker traditions continues in our work at ESR and the Quaker Leadership Center today. ESR is in an unusual position to help bridge these theological differences.”

ESR students have a strong appetite for learning and graduate prepared to thrive in the world, Castle said.

“About half of our students are Quaker and half come from other denominations or from those who do not identify with a denomination,” Castle said. “Quaker theological foundations, as well as our commitment to being welcoming and inclusive, draw people to study here. Whether studying Quakerism, writing in the Theopoetics Program, or witnessing in the Peace and Social Transformation Program, ESR encourages the expression of thoughtful change. ESR is building cultures of peace.”

As the Quaker seminary, Castle said ESR will continue to serve a world that needs compassion in the Quaker tradition.

“My vision for ESR is that we carry into the world all these things we do every day,” she said. “That we initiate complex conversations, that we are responsive to the needs of the world, that we bring intellectual and spiritual power to theological considerations, and that we train people in ministry, discerning what they feel called to do.

“And in my still larger vision, and I will say this as clearly as I can, Quakers are needed in the world – today,” she said. “Quakers are needed at Earlham College and ESR.  Quaker presence and our way of being in the world continues to draw people into something new. Students leave Earlham College and ESR having been changed.”

“My vision for ESR is that we carry into the world all these things we do every day. That we initiate complex conversations, that we are responsive to the needs of the world, that we bring intellectual and spiritual power to theological considerations, and that we train people in ministry, discerning what they feel called to do.”

Gretchen Castle

Prior to the ceremony, ESR dedicated its classroom building as the Perkins-Wildman Community Center in the honor of Jim Perkins and his late wife, Barbara. The Perkins-Wildman family has been one of ESR’s strongest supporters and also a strong advocate for Quaker causes for two generations.

With generosity from the Perkins-Wildman family, ESR will be renovating Quigg Chapel and are preparing to break ground on an outdoor patio and gathering space located between the ESR and Bethany campuses.

Castle was hired as dean of ESR in June 2021 and agreed to delay her installation due to the Covid pandemic.

“This is a pivotal time in the history of both the College and the School of Religion,” Anne Houtman, president of Earlham College and Earlham School of Religion, said during the installation ceremony. “We are blessed to have such an energetic and forward-looking leader at ESR.”

A global leader for Quakers, Castle was previously the General Secretary of the Friends World Committee for Consultation in the Quaker World Office in London, traveling extensively to bring greater unity to Quakers worldwide.

In a career spanning more than four decades, Castle has gained broad experience among Friends globally and across different Quaker traditions. She has served at the Quaker United Nations Offices in New York and Geneva, and participates in the Christian World Communions Annual Meeting of the General Secretaries, where she was appointed the first woman chair and the first Quaker chair. As part of the Christian World Communions, she attended the inauguration of Pope Francis in Rome in 2013. 

In the United States, she was presiding clerk of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Director of Leadership Development for several Quaker retirement communities, and a board development consultant for over 20 years.

Castle’s appointment as dean has been a homecoming for the Richmond native. The daughter of a pastor at Richmond First Friends Church, Castle attended preschool in Stout Meeting House on Earlham’s campus. She graduated from Earlham with the Class of 1979 with a degree in human development and social relationsbefore earning a master’s in education from Temple University.

Earlham School of Religion has hired a pair of outstanding alumni to lead its new Quaker Center for Transformational Congregational Leadership. Della Stanley-Green from the Class of 1990 is the new director and Andy Stanton-Henry, from the Class of 2018, is the new associate director, sharing one full-time position.

The Quaker Center for Transformational Congregational Leadership will offer “educational and development opportunities to persons who are already congregational leaders and to support students entering congregational leadership.” Established in 1960 as a graduate theological division of Earlham College, ESR is the pre-eminent Quaker seminary in the United States. The Center is being funded with a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative, which is designed to help theological schools in the U.S. and Canada prioritize and respond to the most pressing challenges they face as they prepare pastoral leaders now and into the future.

“The Center will be uniquely positioned to develop partnerships across a richly diverse Quaker theological spectrum and enhance ESR’s capacity for fundraising,” ESR Dean Gretchen Castle said.

Stanley-Green earned a Master of Ministry from ESR, a bachelor’s degree from Friends University in Wichita, Kan., and holds a graduate diploma in the Art of Spiritual Direction. She continues to serve both as a spiritual director and adjunct professor, in addition to having recently served as co-superintendent of Western Yearly Meeting in Plainfield, Ind., where she has been recorded as a minister of the gospel among Friends. She has served on Earlham’s Board of Trustees and the ESR Board of Advisors. 

“I want to continue to be involved in ministry that will help Friends grow and move into a vital future,” Stanley-Green said. “I firmly believe that Friends have rich spiritual gifts God has given to us that need to be shared among the various branches of the Friends family and beyond to the larger Church and broader religious and spiritual communities.” 

Stanley-Green has worked with Lilly Endowment-funded projects before, and she understands the challenges of getting a new program started, which includes connecting with constituents, communicating the vision, and sustaining the work. 

Stanton-Henry earned the Master of Divinity at ESR with an emphasis on Peace and Justice Studies. He previously attended Portland Seminary in Oregon, where he studied spiritual formation and spiritual direction, and he has returned to Portland for his Doctor of Ministry in Leadership and Spiritual Formation. He graduated from Barclay College in Haviland, KS with a Bachelor of Science in Bible and Theology. Andy has served as Pastor of Leadership Support and Development at North Valley Friends Church in Newburg, Ore., and is founder and director of Recovering Abundance Ministries which ministers to rural pastors and church leaders. His book, Recovering Abundance: Twelve Practices for Small Town Leaders has been published by Fortress Press.

“I care deeply about the future of Friends,” Stanton-Henry said. “I bring experience with a wide variety of Quaker expressions.”

Both directors recently attended a conference in Pittsburgh for Pathways for Tomorrow grantees conducted by the Association of Theological Schools.

Earlham received a nearly $50,000 grant from Lilly Endowment in the first phase of the Pathways to Tomorrow Initiative. Two consultants collaborated with ESR faculty and students to interview dozens of alumni, leaders in Quaker Meetings and other denominations throughout the country, to discern ways the seminary can adapt its educational programs to meet the challenges. In phase II, Earlham received a $1 million grant from Lilly Endowment to develop the new Quaker Center.

As part of the Center’s initial work, the directors will form an advisory group based in partnerships among a uniquely broad and perhaps unprecedented representation of the Society of Friends. The directors will also plan a conference designed to encourage dialogue between different branches of Quakerism. Existing academic programs in Entrepreneurial Ministry and Bivocational Ministry certificates will function as a foundation for the Center, offering non-credit certificates and continuing education opportunities in these areas in addition to Quaker leadership content.

“As a Quaker, it is exciting to see ESR take a leading role in defining the future of ministry in fresh and innovative ways,” says Anne M. Houtman, president of Earlham College and Earlham School of Religion. “Della and Andy will play a key part in shaping that future, and I am excited that they are joining us in this effort.”

Friends United Meeting, Everence, Western Yearly Meeting, and Bethany Theological Seminary are among the organizations partnering with ESR on this major initiative.

About the Lilly Endowment

Lilly Endowment Inc. is an Indianapolis-based private philanthropic foundation created in 1937 by J.K. Lilly, Sr. and his sons Eli and J.K. Jr. through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Company. Although the gifts of stock remain a financial bedrock of the Endowment, it is a separate entity from the company, with a distinct governing board, staff and location. In keeping with the founders’ wishes, the Endowment supports the causes of community development, education and religion and maintains a special commitment to its founders’ hometown, Indianapolis, and home state, Indiana. The primary aim of its grant-making in religion, which is national in scope, focuses on strengthening the leadership and vitality of Christian congregations in the United States. The Endowment also seeks “to foster public understanding about religion and lift up in fair, accurate and balanced ways the contributions of people of all faiths and religious communities make to our greater civic well-being.

Media contact

Brown Mujete
Director of Communications and Alumni Engagements
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 765.983.1256

Earlham School of Religion’s Xavier Johnson, Colleen Wessel-McCoy, and Lonnie Valentine will serve as panelists at the annual Peace & Justice Studies Association Conference at the University of Mount Union in Alliance, Ohio in October.

The theme of this year’s PJSA Conference is “Vocation of the Peacemaker.”

During the “Issues in Peace Education” panel, Johnson, ESR’s assistant professor of practical theology, will speak about “Teachers’ Use of Restorative Justice to Develop Staff Community in a K-8 School Environment.”

The Faith and Peacemaking panel will also feature Johnson, who will be joined by Wessel-McCoy, ESR’s new professor of peace and justice studies, and Valentine, ESR’s emeritus professor of peace and justice studies. They will speak on the following topics, respectively:

• Partnering with God: Vocation and Peace-Building
• Freedom Church of the Poor: Nurturing the Call of Peacemakers
• The Vocation of the Anti-Peacemaker: A Religious Studies View of Trumpism

The PJSA Conference, which is scheduled for October 13-16, will feature speaker Ethelbert Miller,a writer, and literary activist. He is the author of two memoirs and several books of poetry. He is also a two-time Fulbright Senior Specialist Program Fellow to Israel.

Most recently, Miller was given a grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and a congressional award from Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland in recognition of his literary activism. He was awarded the 2019 Literary Award for poetry by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association for his book, If God Invented Baseball.

Another featured speaker is Bryson Davis, who is currently an instructor of sociology and criminal and restorative justice at Malone University, and an Innovation Fellow at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design.

The Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA) serves as a professional association for scholars in the field of peace and conflict studies. PJSA is dedicated to bringing together academics, educators, and activists to explore alternatives to violence and share visions and strategies for peacebuilding, social justice, and social change. Students, faculty, and peace & justice practitioners are invited to participate in the conference.

For more information about the annual PJSA Conference, visit https://www.peacejusticestudies.org/annual-conference/.

Media contact

Brown Mujete
Director of Communications and Alumni Engagements
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 765.983.1256

Earlham School of Religion has hired Julianna K. Smith as its new assistant professor of Hebrew bible.

Smith is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California Los Angeles in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Culture. Her dissertation is on “Stories of Sexual Violence as Boundary Markers in the Early Jewish Reception of the Hebrew Bible.”

“I am excited that Julianna will be joining the ESR faculty,” said Stephen Angell, Leatherock Professor of Quaker Studies and the chair of the search committee.

“She conducts research in numerous languages – mastering many of them – including Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Aramaic, Akkadian, Phoenician, Ugaritic, and French.”

Smith is a Quaker who has received training at Quaker institutions of higher education, including Portland Seminary of George Fox University and Malone University. She has lectured and assisted in teaching courses at UCLA, Portland Seminary, and the American University in Cairo, Egypt. She has studied and worked abroad in both North Africa and West Asia.

“As I continue to wrestle with how various group identities relate to unjust power structures, I continue to return to Quaker values of embracing difference and working toward justice and peace in order to gain insight on how best to navigate an unjust world,” Smith said. “Having been intellectually, socially, and spiritually formed in Quaker institutions of higher learning, joining the community at ESR represents a homecoming of sorts for me. I am thrilled to be given the opportunity to teach, learn, and serve among Friends once again.”

In welcoming Julianna to campus, Gretchen Castle, ESR Dean noted, “We are thrilled to welcome Julianna to ESR as one who has a deep understanding of the Hebrew Bible, of spiritual and justice engagement, and of Quakerism. Julianna is a rare find and a perfect fit for ESR.”

Smith’s partner, Nathan Widdicombe, will be joining her as she begins her work at ESR. She will begin at the seminary for online and intensive courses in fall 2022 and in-person for the start of spring 2023. 

Media contact

Brown Mujete
Director of Communications and Alumni Engagements
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 765.983.1256