Ian Markham, Dean of Hartford Seminary and Professor of Theology and Ethics, has won one of four awards given by Yale Divinity School to explore the relationship of faith to daily life.

Dr. Markham will develop a course that imaginatively takes up the daily devotional practices of average Christians. In his course, students will be asked to consider both the personal and communal public impacts of their personal practices of prayer, meditation and scripture reading.

Dr. Markham wants students to practice as well as reflect on these most basic of religious actions so that they are more effective at forming communities where prayer and work intertwine seamlessly.

The course will be taught in the Winter/Spring 2006 semester. 

The $5,000 award is one of four given under the Faith as a Way of Life project at Yale Divinity School’s Center for Faith & Culture. The awards are intended for professors who will design creative ways to teach future church leaders, both lay and ordained, ways of living faith and values in all spheres of life. 

Christian Scharen, Associate Director at the Center for Faith & Culture, said “We’re very impressed with the way our award recipients have caught the vision for teaching in theological education that focuses future pastors and lay leaders on the task of how to live the faith holistically and how to mediate faith as a way of life to persons, communities, and cultures.”

The awards were given as a result of a competition that solicited ideas for turning Seminary education toward the complexity of living faithful lives in today’s world. This kind of complexity was demonstrated clearly in the 2004 election, which showed that many people experience a disconnect between private faith and values and public institutions, even while many others long for a connection in these arenas.

Winners of the awards are from schools representing various Christian denominations and regions of the nation, yet all exhibit a passion for deepening the facility of pastoral leaders to think theologically about their lives and the world and to communicate that to congregations. Each of the courses proposed will be developed and taught over the next few years, and findings from the courses will eventually be disseminated to theological schools across the country for possible replication. 

Other award recipients are: 

Professors Gary Parrett and Paul Lim of Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in the Greater Boston area proposed a course focused on history, theology, and practice of catechesis—the practices of teaching faith to new Christians. They seek “to inculcate a more holistic way of being-in-the-world for both the classroom learners and the parishioners, fostering a distinctive Christian identity while not losing the relevance.”

Professors Ann Garrido and Celeste Mueller of The Aquinas Institute in St. Louis, proposed a course that envisions church leaders as practical theologians who make the connections between theology and life. They believe that certain habits of mind and heart are what foster the ability of students “to be ministers who make faith a way of life and help communities to do so in the context of authentic theological conversation.”

Professors Bruce Ashford and David Nelson of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC, will develop a course to assist pastors to serve families trying ‘to live wisely in God’s world by focusing on training parents to train their children to think and live Christianly.” The idea, novel for a Southern Baptist seminary, is to engage and interact with various dimensions of culture in order to model and mediate a thoughtful living of faith in the midst of all spheres of life, rather than maintaining a separate and disconnected stance in relation to culture.

The Faith as a Way of Life Project is supported by a grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc. in Indianapolis, IN. The Project’s mission is to “equip pastors for excellence in the central task of Christian ministry: helping to mediate faith to persons, communities, and cultures as a life-integrating and life-transforming reality.”