Chapter 2: Certificate in Gender, Theology, and Ministry

Table of Contents

What is the certificate in Gender, Theology, and Ministry Certificate?

• The way gender has shaped the church.
• The function of gender as related to the church’s theology.
• Contemporary gender issues surrounding ministry today.

Who can participate in the certificate?

The Gender, Theology, and Ministry certificate is open to all enrolled Divinity School Students in any degree program.

What are the requirements for the certificate?

• MDiv students must submit a declaration of intent for the certificate no later than the spring semester of their middler year. MTS students should make the same declaration no later than the spring semester of their first year. All declarations must be submitted to both the Women’s Center Advisor and the individual student’s academic advisor.
• All students must complete three courses in gender studies. WS205, Debates in Women’s Studies, or an equivalent, is required. The other two courses can be any other courses from the Divinity School or Religion Department containing a clear focus on gender studies.
• All students must complete a service learning or research project within the arena of gender, theology, and ministry.
• During the spring semester of the student’s senior year, students are required to participate in a monthly colloquy to discuss their projects. The colloquy will be conducted by affiliated faculty.

How did the certificate become an opportunity within the Divinity School curriculum?

The following article is a history of the development of the certificate written by Dr. Anathea Portier-Young. Dr. Portier-Young was instrumental in making the Gender, Theology, and Ministry Certificate a reality. This article is the history of the certificate told in narrative form.

Strong Beginnings: The Story of Duke Divinity School’s
Certificate in Gender, Theology, and Ministry
By Anathea Portier-Young

The idea for a certificate program came from the students.

At the beginning of the academic year 2004-2005 I was appointed to serve as faculty sponsor for Duke Divinity School ’s Women’s Center. In this capacity I attended a luncheon sponsored by the Women’s Center, celebrating the women of our community, during Women’s Week in the early part of the Spring Semester of 2005. I sat down to a table of three young women whom I had not previously met. Before long, these remarkably bright and engaging students, each with a fantastic story to tell, had asked me this question: Would it be possible to develop a certificate program within the Divinity School that would allow students to pursue gender studies within an explicitly theological framework? Deeply impressed by their commitment to this field of study, I promised to find out what I could.

I began to have conversations with our Academic Dean, Willie Jennings, and with two faculty members whose teaching and research focused on gender, theology, and ministry, namely Teresa Berger and Mary McClintock Fulkerson. As we did some brainstorming of our own, we asked interested students to consider the following questions: What would such a program look like? What need would it fill? How would it help the church? The response from the students was overwhelming. Within a short period we had received detailed and passionate written responses from ten students. Their answers were thoughtful, enthusiastic, and compelling.

• The manifold needs in ministry that are gender-based or gender-related, and the desire to work theologically on those while in Divinity School.
• The wish to strengthen a community of exploration and learning around gender-related issues in the Divinity School, and to integrate such exploration more visibly into the curriculum.
• Such a program would enhance the perception of DDS, within the university and the church, as a theologically diverse community, welcoming of women’s and men’s voices, and would aid in the recruitment of gifted women students from a broad range of backgrounds.
• Issues of race and gender intersect and need to be addressed in and for the Church.
• Students seek an explicit theological framework for their work in gender studies.

Below, the students speak in their own words:

“I am interested in learning how to minister to women in a way that liberates and empowers them. Important in this is the desire to approach this work from a confessional rather than purely academic perspective. That is, how do we empower women in a way that is consistent with Christian discipleship and community?”

— Chanequa Walker-Barnes, 1^st year MDiv

“As excellent as the Women’s Studies Certificate is here at Duke…it cannot provide me one aspect crucial to my overall calling, a Christian theological perspective on global issues. While it calls me to redress power imbalances in the world, it can only conceive of political and psychological reasons for abuse of power, but cannot conceive of underlying spiritual causes. It offers ways of using language to expose, to disavow, and to empower, but it cannot offer an understanding of the Word incarnate as the source of ultimate healing and redress.”

—Kathryn Broyles, 1^st year MDiv

“This certificate could be of great benefit to anyone who felt called to work in specialized women’s ministries: women’s prisons, crisis centers, individual and marriage/family counseling, etc…[T]here are many students who are interested in theology/church ministry and gender issues. It would be exciting to formally coalesce, support one another’s studies, and collaborate in research and activism….I think of theology related to gender as opening a different door to theological thinking/study which is life-giving in itself.”

—Jenny Krill, 1^st year MDiv

“Being in church history and theology has made painfully clear (and sometimes even in reading scripture in our Hebrew class) that women’s ways of worship and thinking about God have often gone without voice...we assume that we need to know the historical workings and thinkings of the church to adequately pastor congregations of today...it strikes me that we need to understand the historical workings and thinkings of women as well to be able to adequately understand how the women in our congregations or ministry settings are shaped and formed and be able to pastor them well.”

—Sarah Jobe, 2^nd year MDiv

The program received unanimous support from the faculty and administration of the Divinity School.

While the students were working hard to provide us with a clear rationale for the certificate program, Dr. Berger, Dr. McClintock Fulkerson, and I researched comparable programs at peer institutions, mapped out the contours of the proposed program, and put together a proposal for the faculty. The proposal was introduced to the curriculum committee in March 2005, and presented to the full faculty in April 2005. It passed both bodies unanimously, with full support from Dean Greg Jones and Academic Dean Willie Jennings.

With the support of Dean Jones and Provost Peter Lange, the University has approved funding to support the beginning stages of the certificate program. The funding will be used to bring speakers and consultants to the Divinity School campus, to provide course development grants for faculty developing new courses in the area of Gender, Theology, and Ministry, and to support the senior colloquium for students in the program.

The program is growing by leaps and bounds.

By the end of the Spring semester 2005, five students had enrolled in the program. Two more declared intent during the summer, with nine additional students expressing interest in the program. At an information session in September 2005, 40 people were in attendance, including 31 students and nine affiliated faculty and staff. The affiliated faculty and staff included people from the Divinity School, The Religion Department, and the Kenan Institute for Ethics. There are currently 13 faculty and staff affiliates of the program. The level of energy, creativity, interest and commitment displayed by students, faculty, and staff has been remarkable, and signals a strong future for the Certificate Program.

Who is affiliated with the certificate program?

The affiliated faculty and staff are a diverse group of individuals committed to helping the Divinity School and its students understand the role gender plays within theology, ministry, and the church. They are as follows:

Chapter 2: Female Faculty >