The Rev. Dr. Serene Jones is president of Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. The first woman to head the 174-year-old nondenominational seminary, Jones came to Union after seventeen years at Yale University, where she was the Titus Street Professor of Theology at the Divinity School, and chair of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Jones is a prolific and popular scholar in the fields of theology, religion, globalization, and gender studies. Her most recent book, Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World, explores the devastating social and personal effects of violence on the human psyche and the role religious communities can play, both negative and positive, in healing wounds.

Her book, Feminist Theory and Christian Theology, is a standard textbook in feminist theology. Jones is ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ.

Ada María Isasi-Díaz was born and raised in La Habana, Cuba. Brought up in a practicing Catholic home, early in her life she discovered a concern for the poor and the oppressed and a love of religious practices. At the same time, her mother taught her the importance of struggling (la lucha) for what one believes without ever giving up. She left Cuba and became a political refugee in the US in 1960. She lived three years in Lima, Peru as a missionary. “This experience has marked me for life. I often say that it was there that the poor taught me the gospel message of justice. It was there that I learned to respect and admire the religious understandings and practices of the poor and the oppressed and the importance of their everyday struggles, of lo cotidiano. It was there that I realized the centrality of solidarity with the poor and the oppressed in the struggle for justice.” Dr. Isasi is Professor of Ethics and Theology at Drew University Theological School.

Wahu Kaara is a globally renowned Kenyan educator, activist and campaigner for social justice. A prolific writer, poet and speaker, Wahu has devoted her time and energy to civic engagement and incisive analysis of the global political and economic architecture, with a special focus on the impact of globalization on the countries of the South, especially Africa. She has campaigned and written extensively on debt, aid, privatizationand human rights and has been a leader in the Africa and Kenya Social Forum councils that organized the inaugural World Social Forum in Africa in Nairobi in January 2007. Though widowed atan early age, she is a committed Christian, the happy mother of four, and proud grandmother.

S. Wesley Ariarajah, Methodist Minister from Sri Lanka, served both in the pastoral ministry of the church and as lecturer in the History of Religions and New Testament in the common Protestant seminary of the churches in Sri Lanka. In 1981 he was invited to join the staff of the World Council of Churches, where he led the Councils Interfaith Dialogue for over ten years. From 1992 he served as the Deputy General Secretary of the WCC. He has given lectures, conducted seminars, led conferences in many parts of the world and written a number of acclaimed books on ecumenism.

Rev. Dr. Ariarajah is currently the Professor of Ecumenical Theology at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.

Going Forth

Do not be afraid.God goes with us to build bridges of

reconciliation, to create beloved communities of love,

To establish villages of compassion,To nourish people in peacemaking.Go in peace. Go in God’s love. Go with an

assurance of God’s amazing grace.Amen.