Description
Episcopal Divinity School (EDS), which traces its roots to the mid-19 th century, affiliated with Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 2017. This new partnership has allowed EDS to continue providing Episcopal theological education within an accredited, degree-granting seminary while carrying forth its long history and mission.
EDS at Union was created under the leadership of The Very Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, the school’s inaugural Dean and professor of theology at Union. An African-American Episcopal priest and womanist theologian, Dr. Brown Douglas is also the Canon Theologian at the Washington National Cathedral, and the author, most recently, of Resurrection Hope: A Future Where Black Lives Matter.
A key concept in Resurrection Hope is the notion of the “moral imaginary,” which Brown Douglas identifies as “that palpable yet imperceptible force that defines the way in which a nation intuitively perceives and responds to matters of injustice as well as the way it envisions and enacts justice.” This attention to the nation’s moral imaginary shapes the conceptualization of a new project which will leverage the power of film to ignite the moral imaginary of diverse knowledge makers who are shaping public discourse on race, religion, white supremacy, and justice.
EDS at Union will regularly gather a cohort of scholars, journalists, and civic activists of color drawn from multiple religious traditions. Created as a space of imagination and exploration, the group will use film as the inspiration point for each of its gatherings with the explicit aim of stimulating and developing public-facing work aimed at “expanding the moral imaginary.”
The group will cultivate new multi-institutional partnerships, to be supported in turn by a series of small grants. Collaborative projects funded by these small grants will both inform the subsequent efforts of the working group and form the basis for the development of new lines of work to be continued beyond the period of the grant. In addition to supporting the organization of the working group, small honoraria for its participants, and two in-person interreligious retreats each year, funding from the Luce Foundation’s grant will support the recording and publishing of one-on-one conversations between Dean Douglas and members of the working group cohort, producing a digital library of their conversations.
Recommendation: That the Directors of the Henry Luce Foundation approve a two-year grant of $250,000 to Episcopal Divinity School at Union to support “Religion and Racial Justice: Expanding the Moral Imaginary Through Film.”
https://utsnyc.edu/eds/