Practice what you preach.
Ministry doesn’t stop once you enter seminary. Opportunities for formal and informal ministry are varied, instructive, relevant to your future, and impactful to the diverse community around us.
We are surrounded by a world in need and opportunities to make a difference are many. The immediate vicinity offers a surprising range of social services that operate largely on a volunteer basis. These include several local food banks, a USDA sponsored summer meal program for children, court appointed special advocates (CASA) for children in the court system, as well as residence programs for women and their children. Less than an hour away are organizations that offer support services to immigrant populations where Spanish language skills are much-needed.
Seminarians interact with the undergraduate students of the University of the South by mentoring multiple social justice and service programs. Sustainability is a high priority on the Mountain as the School is situated on a 13,000-acre “living laboratory” and environmental ethics is one of the courses that fulfills the ethics requirement in the M.Div. curriculum.
Following the focus of The Episcopal Church on creation care, the Creation Care Committee facilitates hands-on environmental ministry experiences and ideas with an aim to inspire future clergy and lay church leaders at the seminary for the work of environmental stewardship in the parishes and communities they will serve.
The Committee for Diversity and Reconciliation leads the community in discussions and actions around a range of critical social issues such as race and racism, discrimination based on gender, age, class, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and disability.
This committee plans, coordinates, and executes service events through which members of the seminary community can witness to and live out their call to proclaim the Good News and to share their resources of time, money, and talent with persons in need.
The Pastoral Care Committee supports the life of the seminary through a multi-leveled approach that is holistic by addressing the spiritual, emotional, and physical needs of the community.
What does it mean to be the University of the South? The answer to that question changes from one generation to the next and from one individual to the next. Being “of the South” means that we are both the beneficiaries and the critics of a rich tradition. While we are deeply invested in this region, we also engage with other communities, locally and globally. Diversity and variety—of the South and of the world—inform and underpin our institution, and all our community’s citizens must confront this question on some level.
Language matters. It shapes our sense of reality and is therefore crucial for our understanding of God and others. Through language we forge and maintain our relationships with God and one another.
The Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation at the University of the South is a six-year initiative investigating the university’s historical entanglements with slavery and slavery’s legacies. Our Project’s name memorializes the late Professor of History, Houston Bryan Roberson, who was the first tenured African American faculty member at Sewanee and the first to make African American history and culture the focus of their teaching and scholarship.
