This fall, the Graduate Theological Union continued to serve as a crossroads for faith and social change as it hosted a trio of national leaders and authors who offered positive, penetrating, and prescient perspectives on the future of Christianity, interfaith relations, and politics. Sojourners founder Jim Wallis, Penn State history professor Philip Jenkins, and Senator John Danforth all found the GTU the perfect place to talk about bridging cultural divides and developing faith into meaningful action.

On September 11, bestselling author Jim Wallis reflected on the religious implications of the 9/11 attacks five years ago before a standing-room-only crowd at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley. The founder of the faith-based publication Sojourners and author of God’s Politics: Why the Rights Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, Wallis drew on personal anecdotes and biblical teachings to provide visions of reconciliation and positive action in an unstable world. The GTU sponsored the event with Beatitudes, a nonprofit peace organization, and Sojourners, the social justice organization founded by Wallis in 1971 while he was a seminarian at Trinity Evangelical School in Chicago.

As the GTU’s Convocation speaker on September 20, Penn State history professor Philip Jenkins described the future of Christianity as arising out of the Global South─Africa, Asia, and Latin America─which, due to its physical geography and culture, brings believers to draw radically different Biblical interpretations than people in the Global North. The award-winning author of The New Faces of Christianity, the eagerly awaited sequel to The Next Christendom, and expert on wide-ranging topics such as terrorism, the Catholic Church, and American politics, Jenkins presented “Believing the Bible in a Global Context” to students, faculty, alumni, and friends in the Pacific School of Religion chapel.

Former Missouri senator John Danforth, an ordained Episcopal priest, spoke about finding common ground in the moral values debate at the GTU’s annual Blessing of the Crush fundraising gala for student scholarships on October 5 at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco. Senator Danforth was honored at the event for his decades of public service, which include work as a lawyer, Missouri attorney general, Congressman, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. A vocal supporter of the separation of church and state and inclusive religious conversation, the senator is the author of the new book Faith and Politics: How the Moral Values Debate Divides America and How to Move Forward.

All three speakers were well-received, kicking off another year of ecumenical and interreligious collaboration that is the hallmark of the GTU. Their probing questions about the best way to live authentically while also respecting difference put center stage the magnitude of the GTU mission to provide theological leadership for a complex world.