The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology will host the 2015 Integrative Project presentations on June 20 and 25, when students from the Master of Divinity and MA in Theology & Culture programs will share the projects that serve as a capstone of their time in graduate school. The Integrative Projects are part of what makes The Seattle School’s curriculum unique—born out of years of study, countless conversations with faculty, and each student’s distinctive embodiment of text, soul, and culture.
This year’s projects engage gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, church leadership, art, mythology—and more. Here’s a sample:
- Allyson Nicole Arendsee, MATC, will pull from Shelly Rambo’s theology of trauma to present Making in the Middle: The Artist’s Role of Witnessing in the Middle Space. “To expand the Church’s capacity for beauty, truth, and goodness asks for a transformation of life that sees through the lens of the shadow world of imagination rather than the familiar. The role of the artist is a prophetic witness of the middle space, of Holy Saturday, in the life of the Church.”
- Ryan Marsh, MDiv, will weave biblical exegesis with social critique to raise crucial questions for the American church and work toward a ‘theology of riot.’ “Contemporary American racial tensions project unique insight back into biblical narrative and help to reframe a common sense imagining of Jesus’ temple occupation and his surrounding motivations. Conversely, the riot in Luke’s temple offers the white church a new way to view present day protest as a ‘visitation from our God.’”
- Martha Elisabeth Wood, MDiv, will pull from attachment theory and relational psychology to discuss how our earliest relationships shape our perception of God and how this affects the role of a spiritual leader. “Is it possible for a spiritual leader to be an immediately personal presence instead of a transcendent mystic or a guru sought out intermittently to bestow nuggets of cryptic wisdom?”
- Cecelia Ranae Romero Likes, MATC, will share a series of paintings that reimagine certain Biblical women through the lens of her Millennial Chicana identity and the robust New Mexican Catholicism of her childhood. “Mujerista: The New Wave is about holding on, letting go, how to make something your own.”
- Jessica Maureen Ronhaar, MDiv, will share how her understanding of prayer was transformed after a devastating flood in the Stillaguamish Valley, where she served as a pastor. “This project is a compilation of my prayers through this time. Prayers that range from lament to joy, from frustration to praise. This is my journey with my community, family, and God through a time that didn’t and still doesn’t make sense. This is my journey to pastor well, to care well, and to live well.”
- In Know Your Enemy: American Incarceration & the Social Imagination of the Deep State, Matthew David Rock, MDiv, will look at the dehumanizing cycles and devastating effects of America’s prison industrial complex, proposing that, “by bearing witness to Exodus and the cross, we live within a Christian imagination formidable enough to disrupt the carceral imagination.”
Believe us—we’re barely scratching the surface. We are so proud of the work all our graduates are generating, and we are confident that the ideas they present will play crucial roles in conversations and movements that extend far beyond our walls. If you are curious about the ideas above, you want to know more about the work that occurs at The Seattle School, or you are simply looking to be intrigued and inspired, you won’t regret joining us. This year’s presentations will be given across a two-day span, 3:00-6:00pm on June 20 and 1:00-5:00pm on June 25.