Author: Chloë Westerfield
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The Story Behind Our New Brand
A logo is a powerful tool for the sighted population. It is said that 90% of information transmitted to the brain of a sighted person is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text. Visual branding can create moods, evoke emotions, and tell stories of the institution in a nanosecond. Meadville Lombard unveiled…
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Symbol of Office: New Seal of the School
To commemorate the inauguration of Dr. Elías Ortega, Meadville Lombard created the school’s first Chain of Office featuring our new seal as the center medallion and two smaller medallions honoring the institutions of our heritage: Meadville Theological Seminary and Lombard College. These three medallions were designed by a Meadville Lombard staff member Tomo Hillbo, Director…
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Covenanting Together for Institutional Service
We make our covenant with the mutual understanding that institutional service requires collaboration, accountability, and mutual support. As Meadville Lombard Theological School makes the transition to new presidential leadership, we name our hope for the future of a school that holds high the values of Unitarian Universalism, even as it moves forward our faith tradition.…
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MLTS Receives Nearly $2 Million for Professorship
Marking the July 2019 retirement of the Rev. Dr. Lee Barker as president of the school, the Meadville Lombard Board of Trustees announced that it has raised $1.9 million to endow the Lee Barker Professor of Leadership Studies. Under the extraordinary leadership of the Rev. Dr. Laurel Hallman, gifts to the professorship were solicited to…
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This Big White Box
[One of the requirements for our MDiv program is to complete a basic 10-week unit of Clinical Pastoral Education in a program certified by the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education that focuses on pastoral encounters with persons in need or in crisis. Eli Snider, one of our second-year students, delivered this essay at a CPE…
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Ministry at the End of the World (or) What Future Is This?
[This sermon was delivered during the Ingathering Worship Service, August 28, 2019] The world seems to be always coming to an end. Whether fires devour our forests or raising waters claiming dry land, or by unbridled unleashing technological innovations towards each other and nature, the world as we have come to know it will cease…
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Presidential Priorities
I believe that Meadville Lombard Theological School serves a unique role in Theological Education as an institution that prepares religious professionals that are academically rigorous, grounded in solid spiritual practices, passionate about justice work, and have a robust, inclusive UU-identity. Because of my vocation as a theological educator and service as a lay leader, I…
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Responses to the Recent Mass Shootings
Below are two messages reflecting the recent series of mass shootings and the current state of this country, addressed to our students and alums; one from Dr. Elías Ortega, President of Meadville Lombard, and another from Dr. Pamela Lightsey, Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs. As I was coming of age in the ’90s,…
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Ministry of Language: Interview with Alex Kapitan
When Meadville Lombard launched this new website, we contacted Alex Kapitan, a queer genderqueer spiritual activist, intersectional educator and organizer, and radical copyeditor, to do intentional copyediting. We asked Alex to tell us about per work and future projects. ML: Could you please tell us how you started Radical Copyediting? These days when people ask…
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Jussie Smollett, Believing the Victim, and Deep National Wounds
Jussie Smollett, the 36-year-old openly gay actor and singer known for his role as Jamal Lyon in the television drama Empire, will have his day of reckoning, for good or bad. He has been charged by Chicago police with felony disorderly conduct. Smollett allegedly filed a false police report after orchestrating a repulsive hate-crime attack against…