Date: November 3, 2023
I confess this is not the ideal time. We are preparing for Board meetings in New York for early next week. But the invitation came and I was honored to accept. On Sunday, I will be the preacher at The University Church in Oxford (where John Wesley preached and where John Henry Newman was a vicar). And tonight, we have a book launch for a collection of essays called The Serendipity of Hope, edited by Simon Lee and myself. My co-written essay with the Rev. Dr. Joseph Thompson is entitled “Slavery Reparations”.
The book is interesting. It was a result of a COVID gathering. The world over people used zoom to gather with groups from their past. This gathering was comprised of academics all employed at the same institution – Liverpool Hope University (then Liverpool Hope University College) – in the 1990s. The result was a set of reflections on the impact of an institution. We then decided to turn these reflections into a book.
Institutions are precious. Institutions carry the DNA of a tradition. This book ended up being an interesting exploration of how an institution can do so much good.
The Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, Ph.D.
Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary and the President of The General Theological Seminary