A new program launching at Eastern Mennonite Seminary in October will form collaborative, co-learning relationships with five local congregations each year. The program, A Seminary for Every Congregation, will bring theological education and resources to the congregations at no cost.
The recipient of 91΄σΙρβs 2025 Outstanding Young Alum Award, the Rev. Brittany βSmashβ Caine-Conley MDiv β14, will teach trauma and resilience studies at Eastern Mennonite Seminary this fall. She will also teach at 91΄σΙρβs Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and work with the Seminary Extended grant in collaboration with Union Presbyterian Seminary and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. An ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, Caine-Conley grew up in Harrisonburg and described returning to teach at 91΄σΙρ as βa dream.β
As interim president over the past year, the Rev. Dr. Shannon W. Dycus has demonstrated the leadership capacity, character, institutional understanding, and community trust necessary to lead 91΄σΙρ during a pivotal period in its history. Following broad and enthusiastic affirmation from stakeholders across the university community, the Board of Trustees unanimously voted to appoint Dycus as 91΄σΙρβs 10th president, effective July 1, 2026.
What does it look like to be a thermostat instead of a thermometer in a polarized world? That’s one of the questions driving the work of Dr. Jacob Alan Cook, assistant professor of Christian ethics at Eastern Mennonite Seminary and director of the Doctor of Ministry in Peacemaking and Social Change Program. In his latest piece for Christian Ethics Today, Jake draws on social science, Scripture, and decades of conflict transformation practice to offer something rare: concrete, theologically grounded strategies for depolarizing ourselves before we try to depolarize anyone else.
“Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?” James Baldwin asked that question in 1963. Dr. David F. Evans, Professor of History and Intercultural Studies and Associate Dean of Eastern Mennonite Seminary, picks it up in a new piece for Presbyterian Outlook.
Drawing on his 2025 book “Damned Whiteness: How White Christian Allies Failed the Black Freedom Movement,” Evans argues that diversity and inclusion initiatives too often leave oppressive structures intact. What’s needed, he writes, is something more: building new structures rooted in love, solidarity, and the Black freedom tradition.
91΄σΙρ is proud to announce that four of its esteemed faculty members have been appointed as endowed chairs, effective fall 2026. The appointments were confirmed by the 91΄σΙρ Board of Trustees during its March meeting. Those faculty members include Dr. Peter Dula, Myron S. Augsburger Endowed Chair of Theology.
Union Presbyterian Seminary has received a transformative $10 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to implement Seminary Extended: Strengthening Pastoral Leadership, a groundbreaking collaborative initiative with Eastern Mennonite Seminary and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary to deliver congregation-embedded leadership development, shared faculty across institutions, and a joint Doctor of Ministry (DMin) in Adaptive Leadership. The initiative will bring the three theological institutions together in a first-of-its-kind collaboration to strengthen pastoral formation for todayβs rapidly changing ministry landscape.
The Rev. Dr. Almeda Wright, associate professor of religious education at Yale Divinity School and author of Teaching to Live: Black Religion, Activist-Educators, and Radical Social Change (Oxford University Press, 2024), will present at 91΄σΙρβs annual Augsburger Lecture Series on Monday, Oct. 27, in the MainStage Theater (University Commons 170). The lecture starts at 7 p.m. and will be followed by a reception. Dr. Wright is a collaborative partner and co-principal investigator in the Conectere project, which is connected with 91΄σΙρ’s graduate counseling program and the Shalom Collaboratory at Eastern Mennonite Seminary.
Join us for three days of learning, storytelling, and conversation with people who hold practical wisdom and whose theology leads them into everyday justice work. Participants will explore organizing as an Anabaptist-Mennonite expression of peacebuilding, wrestle with the theological questions it raises, and begin building ongoing connections among leaders in both movement and broad-based organizing.
