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Princeton Theological Seminary’s Office of PhD Studies was recently awarded a grant from the Wabash Foundation. As a result of the grant, Dr. Heath Carter, Associate Professor of American Christianity and Director of PhD Studies, along with the support of Rev. Denise Carrell, PhD Program Coordinator, will lead a momentous project that seeks to promote communal care and connection.
The year-long project titled, So That We Might Build Together: Cultivating Honest Conversation, Enduring Trust and Mutual Care in the Midst of Deep Difference, encapsulates the goals that are hoped to be met by next summer at the grant’s end.
Three cohorts—each comprised of a mix of doctoral students and faculty—will convene throughout the year to discuss the challenges of sustaining life-giving conversation in a theologically diverse community. In the interest of expanding our community’s ability to do this well, over the course of this academic year each cohort participant will develop a pedagogical experiment that they will test out in their own classroom. In February 2025, Bishop Karen P. Oliveto, the first openly-queer Bishop of the United Methodist Church, who is an advocate for the church finding ways to stay together even in the midst of deep disagreements, will participate in a public event and meet with the cohorts to offer feedback on their planned pedagogical experiments. Following her visit, each person within the cohort groups will launch their experiment, testing their ideas by executing something brave and daring in terms of sustaining a difficult conversation in their classroom, Carter says.
At the end of the academic year, cohort members will compose a short essay about the experiment and those essays will be compiled into a book that can then be utilized as a resource at Princeton Seminary and beyond. The book will serve as a resource for individuals in the broader community who aim to do similar work around sustaining meaningful conversation while simultaneously embracing differences.
Recently, the project commenced with a faculty panel entitled “Can We Hold Together in a World Coming Apart?” The discussion featured faculty members—Kenneth G. Appold, Lisa Cleath, Keri L. Day, and Kenda Creasy Dean – with Carter as the moderator.
Attendees and PhD, ’29, students Claudia Alvarez and Sangeon Kim spoke on what they learned during the panel. “This is THE conversation we should be having as a society. We have different ideas, but if we over-identify ourselves with those ideas, we can miss the real point at the end of the day. We will be together for three years, living as a community. Even if we have different ideas, we are not our ideas. Sangeon is someone beyond the ideas he has and I’m more than the ideas I have. The ideas we have are a product of our circumstances but there should be something we can connect on. There are still so many things [left] to be said, from the perspective of students. I’m glad this was the beginning of having those conversations”, Alvarez says.
Kim adds “its all connected to the diversity, equity, and inclusion issues. We are coming from different context and countries, but we choose to study together. If we are obsessed only with our (individual) main focus (now), later it will be hard to understand others, including those studying other fields and contexts. However, our experience (in the cohort) will allow us to learn from different circumstances. We can figure out a better way to answer this important question of how to have difficult conversations with others, who we may not agree with.”
Much of the work of the grant will take place behind the scenes in small groups of faculty and doctoral students,” Carter says. “Our student body is reading and thinking about how to sustain vibrant, life-giving conversation in classrooms and across campus, even in the midst of deep, deep differences. We believe that work will yield practical results for our learning, community, and many more around the country and around the world.
Carrell shared that, empowering students and faculty with tools that can be used to break down walls is a hope. The tearing down of walls is a first step and it has the potential to greatly impact the global church and the world.
“I remember a wonderful professor who impacted my studies asking me, as we go into the world, are we going to be people who continue to dismantle these walls that separate us, or are we going to be the kind of people that build them back up? It’s really one or the other,” she says.
“The project’s long-term vision is broad. While we are training the Princeton Seminary community to thoughtfully engage difficult conversations internally, the project is also equipping students with tools they can use as they lead in a diversity of contexts beyond the seminary walls,” Carrell says. “We hope that this experience will empower them to be part of the transformation of the communities they touch.”
PhD student Stephen R. Di Trolio has a deep investment in education, especially in a confessional space. He’s considering ways in which a spirit of ecumenism and diversity can be fostered.
“In a world that seems to be even more polarized, I wonder how these conversations can continue to shape the ways in which we pursue education cross-culturally and denominationally,” he says. “I want to think creatively with others, as to the ways in which we hold spaces of dialogue and true conversation in academic settings.”
Wing Yin Li, a PhD student is also looking forward to the multicultural implications of the project.
“As an East Asian, I am interested in exploring how my presence and experiences can enrich our community’s efforts to foster discussions about differences and mutual care,” Li says. “The potential for new insights to emerge from collaborating with individuals from various social backgrounds also deeply excites me.”
I hope we can model what it looks like to bring our full selves into conversation and community, while approaching others who see the world differently with extraordinary generosity.
John Bowlin, Dean and Vice President of Academic Affairs, says the project will help everyone to better reflect on an innate challenge.
“Diversity is our strength, no doubt, but it is also a challenge,” he says. “[This project] will help us identify the attitudes we need to have and the practices we need to develop in order to learn from each other and care for each other despite the differences that might otherwise divide us.”
Carter’s hope is that the work done through this project will also impact the greater ecumenical community.
“I hope we can model what it looks like to bring our full selves into conversation and community, while approaching others who see the world differently with extraordinary generosity,” he says. “This kind of generosity can change the world. It’s something that’s lacking in our society right now, but I think it springs from the Good News, from the Gospel itself. We have to figure out how to live faithfully in a plural world, for the sake of church and society alike.”
