Date: May 28, 2026
After a full and fast-paced Spring Semester in 2026, our director, the Rev. Katherine Grieb, will be shifting gears and traveling across the Anglican Communion to both teach and strengthen partnerships. Dr. Grieb will catch up with Dean Markham and Principal and Professor Jolyon Michell of St John’s College, Durham in the UK to discuss an emerging collaboration between our institutions. She will also return as a lecturer for the “Anglicanism in European Perspective” program, a collaboration among the Anglican Institute in Belgium, the Anglican Centre in Rome, Virginia Theological Seminary, the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe, Trinity Church Wall Street, and the Utrecht Summer School. Back in the US, she is preaching at the installation of the Rev. Dr. Herman Browne of Liberia as rector of Trinity Episcopal Church of Pine Bluff, Arkansas where VTS graduate John Harmon, also of Liberia, serves as Diocesan Bishop. The VTS connection with the Episcopal Church in Liberia is deep and strong as our graduate John Payne (1836) became the first Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Liberia.
Back at home, the work continues! We are wrapping up a grant project with Trinity Church Wall Street, and writing both a final report and a workbook to empower young Anglican leaders and strengthen their leadership skills. At the same time, in collaboration with the St. Nicholas Center for Faith and Justice, we are developing a new grant proposal for Trinity focused on faith and justice formation in the US and empowering our Anglican partners globally.
Summer is also sabbatical application review season for CACS, and we look forward to welcoming four Anglican scholars and other leaders for their sabbaticals in the coming academic year. We are supporting a Cross-Cultural Education Program (CCEP) taking place this summer in Brazil and getting ready for a CCEP this winter in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Alongside all this, the CACS team will be preparing this coming year’s Rumi Forum Scriptural Reasoning events, and other educational forums. A big focus will be preparing for two fall conferences: a meeting of women bishops of the Anglican Communion and a meeting of the Anglican Communion Science Commission (you’ll hear more about those tomorrow). With some rest along the way, we will be energized for the year ahead and excited to continue deepening the relationships and practices that shape who we are.
Natalie Ward, Hartley Hobson Wensing, and Katherine Grieb