Posted on 04/26/2022 9:28:58 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Yale Divinity School, located in New Haven, Connecticut
Two centuries after its founding, Yale Divinity School marked its first-ever non-Christian service in honor of Earth Day.
Around 80 students gathered on April 22 outside the university’s Marquand Chapel to mark the annual observance with singing and non-denominational prayers, according to The Yale Daily News.
A student organizer told the independent student newspaper it was the first time a non-Christian service was held at the Yale Divinity School in its nearly 200-year history.
Master of divinity student Tasha Brownfield led the event, which she described as “Indigenous- and Black ecology-based with a sprinkle of cosmology and Pantheistic mysticism.”
The event featured an opening speech from Brownfield that included a “land acknowledgment” and a call for those in attendance to “honor and respect the enduring relationships that exist between Native peoples and their land.”
“There aren’t many spaces where people who fall outside a very particular Protestant lens can worship authentically at Yale Divinity School,” Brownfield, who said she is trying to launch and curate "pantheistic mysticism" as a religious practice, told the newspaper.
“So for my colleagues and myself, I decided to make a space where people could worship authentically and include black Theology, Indigenous ecology, some southern charm that separated from the elitism of the institution to something that’s really embodied and grounded within this space.”
Attendees took part in a chalice lighting ceremony under the Unitarian Universalist tradition, followed by a prayer to the Hindu fertility god Prithivi, which Brownfield described as the religion’s personification of Earth.
Another student, Nai Garard, gave a speech on “Black Ecology,” which reportedly spoke to how pushing back against racialized aspects of climate change can be a means toward black liberation, The Daily News reported.
Another 200-year-old theological institution, Harvard Divinity School, held a similar celebration Sunday for Earth Day called “Gathering Light,” which also featured musical and video performances.
Founded in 1822, Yale Divinity School has hosted Earth Day festivities for over a decade, but Sunday marked the first time a non-Christian service was held at the school.
The university’s website says “training for Christian ministry was a main purpose” in founding Yale College in 1701. But it wasn’t until theology students asked to be recognized as a group distinct from the general student body that the divinity school was officially founded.
Today, Yale Divinity School professes an "enduring commitment to foster the knowledge and love of God through scholarly engagement with Christian traditions in a global, multifaith context."
"Participating in the vibrant life of Yale University, the Divinity School is uniquely positioned to train leaders for church and society given its ecumenical and international character, engagement with music and the arts, and commitment to social justice," the divinity school website reads. "Rigorous scholarly inquiry, corporate worship and spiritual formation, and practical engagement in a variety of ministries enable students to develop their knowledge and skills in a community that welcomes and affirms human diversity."
The school hasn't shied away from controversy when it comes to orthodox Christian teaching.
In 2008, Yale reportedly introduced a course called "Christian Theology and Harry Potter," which explored the popular series to examine Christian themes such as sin, evil and resurrection.
Yale Divinity School made headlines in 2016 when a spokesperson urged Christians not to vote for then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump but to follow Jesus' command to love him just like He teaches people to "love your enemies."
In a column published in USA Today, Yale Communications Director Tom Krattenmaker said that Jesus' command to "love your enemies" applies even in the American political context.
It is as if blacks want to destroy themselves. What a depressing culture
Another student, Nai Garard, gave a speech on “Black Ecology,” which reportedly spoke to how pushing back against racialized aspects of climate change can be a means toward black liberation, The Daily News reported.
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I’d rather go to the dentist
BLM destroys black society more than racism ever did because they are rotting their culture from the inside.
Just following the pope I guess...
I’m not at all religious, and this offends me mightily.
These so-called Christians on the left have lost their damn minds. Seriously, you have to wonder just what their core beliefs really are, religiously speaking.
It seems like the Left has never stopped their social-engineering and experimentation on Black Americans. As a group, they've been a very useful political tool.
Paraphrasing a saying...
If you can’t compete, whine whine whine again.
Voodoo might be added to the fun. Slitting chicken’s throats with a knife and spilling their blood on the ground is a sure pathway to heaven.
That’s not a church service. That’s a pagan ritual.
I find this story immensely depressing. As a Christian, and a woman interested in American history, this departure from any kind of orthodoxy is like looking at something that you know will implode shortly and there is little you can do about it. Once upon a time, universities like Harvard and Yale et al were bastions of intellectualism and classical learning. Now they are pools of degenerate muck, whose only purpose aside from snobbery is to paradoxically present themselves as culturally relevant by enrolling the likes of students who think there is such a thing as Black ecology . Better to get a trade, and educate yourself in the classics. This is just another level of Dante’s hell.
Oh look,,
The progressives have progressed to
.worshiping idols of wood and stone
.
.AGAIN.
.
Better bring back the baby burning Moloch Statue/oven or some prog will get its/?/it’s fweewings hurt.
.
Sounds re the REgressive to me though.
They are CINO’s, Christians in name only. They aren’t true Christians as they worship a God of their own making. Thye created God I. Their image, which allows all,manner of sinful activities specifically condemned in God’s actual word. They pick and choose what they wish to obey, and throw out anything thst condemns what they want to indulge in that is considered by God to be abominations or sins
From Yale’s Survey of the CLASS of 2022:
http://features.yaledailynews.com/blog/2018/09/06/class-of-2022-by-the-numbers/
[EXCERPT]
Around three-fourths of those surveyed identified as straight, while nearly 5 percent identify as gay and just over 9 percent as bisexual or transsexual. Three percent opted not to answer, and the remaining 8 percent identified as asexual, ace spectrum or questioning their sexual orientation.
Holding a pagan service “in honor of Earth Day”?
What is this “divinity school” for?
Donors to this school, taken note.
“I am the Lord Thy God, thou shall have no gods before me’’.
FROM YALE’s SURVEY OF THEIR 2022 CLASS:
SOURCE: http://features.yaledailynews.com/blog/2018/09/06/class-of-2022-by-the-numbers/
[EXCERPT]
Nearly three-fourths of respondents identify as “very liberal” or “somewhat liberal.” While just over 16 percent said they were centrist, and almost 9 percent somewhat “conservative,” slightly less than 2 percent of respondents identified as “very conservative.”
These figures are consistent with previous News surveys. Roughly 75 percent of respondents from a survey profiling the class of 2021 described themselves as somewhat or very liberal. Sixteen percent identify as moderate, while only around 10 percent consider themselves somewhat or very conservative. These numbers also parallel those in a survey the News distributed to the entire student body in November 2016 in advance of the presidential election that fall.
I wonder if the organizers are familiar with the term,”Turn or Burn?”
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