The School of Theology is pleased to announce that seminarian’s Michael Sturdy, T’25, and Nolan McBride, T’25, have won first and second place respectively in The Living Church Foundation’s 15th annual Student Essays in Christian Wisdom competition.
Submissions came from a diversity of Anglican and Episcopal seminary and divinity school students in the U.S., Canada, and Kenya.
First-Place Winner Michael Sturdy
The first-place winner is Michael Christian Sturdy, T’25, for his essay, “Teasing Out a Bonhoefferian Imago Dei.” Sturdy is a candidate for holy orders in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas and a senior at the School of Theology of the University of the South. He also holds a master’s degree in history from Baylor University. Sturdy’s first-place essay was published in the October 2024 Education issue of The Living Church magazine.
Second-Place Winner Nolan McBride
The second-place winner is Nolan McBride for his essay, “Peacemaking and the Theology of St. Oscar Romero.” McBride is a senior Master of Divinity student at the School of Theology of the University of the South and postulant to Holy Orders. Raised Anabaptist, he holds a Master of Arts with a concentration in historical studies from Bethany Theological Seminary.
The University of the South, familiarly known as Sewanee, comprises a nationally recognized College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, a School of Letters, and a distinguished School of Theology serving the Episcopal Church. Located on 13,000 acres atop Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau, Sewanee enrolls 1,750 undergraduates and approximately 145 seminarians in master’s and doctoral programs annually. Sewanee is the only institution of higher education governed by more than two dozen dioceses of the Episcopal Church.
