STONES OF HOPE

Here is the text version of my Commencement address at the Graduate Theological Foundation in South Bend, Indiana on Friday, May 8, 2015:

by Rev. Dr. C. Anthony Hunt

First, I would like to express my appreciation to Dr. Kendra Clayton, the Board of Directors of the Graduate Theological Foundation, the faculty, students and administration, for the very kind invitation to share with you on this momentous occasion.   It is quite an honor for me to return to this institution that has been one of my intellectual homes – an institution where I was a graduate student, and where I have been privileged to serve as a part of the faculty over the past several years.  

And especially to the graduates of the 2015 class of the Graduate Theological Foundation, I offer words of congratulations and blessing to you, your families and the places you serve.

I am reminded of a portion of a simple poem by the great American poet Langston Hughes that encourages us to -

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow. Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow. Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow. (“Dreams”)

 

It is my sense that one of the things that all people of faith and conscious wrestle with, and seek to hold to - in any variety of traditions, perspectives, persuasions, or systems of belief – including those of the Abrahamic faith traditions – Judaism, Islam and Christianity - is the matter of hope.  The yearning to comprehend, and appropriate hope is something that we all hold in common.

These are days of tremendous change and challenge in our world.   From the collapse of  economies that affect all of us – to the wars that are now being fought in various places across the globe - to natural catastrophe – to the proliferation of violence that affects many people and communities across America and the world, these are days of unprecedented change and challenge.

The Church and School Partnerships

Here is a link to a Black Enterprise magazine article that I and Epworth Chapel are featured in dealing with Baltimore, and especially the church's work in the community:  http://www.blackenterprise.com/education/education-19/

The Church and Community Parnterships

Here is an article on the UM General Commission on Religion and Race website on community partnerships in the midst of the unrest in Baltimore in which I am featured: http://gcorr.org/stories/baltimore-community-partnership.

Here's a link to my commencement address at the Graduate Theological Foundation in South Bend, Indiana on 5/8/15.  I was also inducted as a Faculty Fellow of the Foundation, which is the highest distinction bestowed on a faculty member.    http://blog.gtfeducation.org/2015-gtf-graduation-video/

What have We Wrought? – The Legacy of the Washington Conference

Rev. Dr. C. Anthony Hunt

 

This article was published in the "United Methodist Connection" in September 2014.

Growing up in the Methodist Church, it often puzzled me as to why and how there came to be so many Methodist Churches located in such close proximity to one another.   St. Paul Methodist Church – the church in which I was baptized as an infant – was a small church, all of whose members were black.  Although I was regularly taken to church by my parents and grandparents, the problem of race in the church really didn’t dawn on me until 1969 when I was seven years old. 

That was the year that St. Paul received its first white minister.  That was also the year that there began to be discussions and outward overtures from the white Methodist church around the corner (Oxon Hill) about shared ministries and possible merger.  Up to that point, the two churches seemed to exist in two separate worlds.  Although they were less than a mile apart, in the same denomination, and supposedly worshipping and serving the same God, the churches were in fact essentially invisible to each other.

It was at the point when serious talks of merger and shared ministry began that the realities of racial division in the church came to the surface for the members of both St. Paul and Oxon Hill churches.  Up until 1968, St. Paul, one of the oldest Methodist churches in Maryland, had been a part of the Washington Conference and the Central Jurisdiction - all-black sub-structures that had been created within the larger denomination, with the uniting of Methodist factions in 1939, while Oxon Hill had been an established and well-regarded member of the Baltimore Conference and the broader Methodist Church. 

"What Church Leaders Can Learn from Other Enterprises" published in Leading Ideas, an e-publication of the Lewis Leadership Center at Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, DC - http://www.churchleadership.com/leadingideas/leaddocs/2014/140108_article2.html

Check out this sermon - "It's Just a Test" (James 1).