Candler’s Women, Theology, and Ministry (WTM) program will focus its 2023 Annual Women’s Forum on the concept and exercise of solidarity: how it might be practiced in an age of waning organized religion in the U.S., what it might look like among women, and how to construct an ethic of solidarity in an academicsetting.
“Solidarity: A Spirituality of Intercession in Theological Education” will take place on Thursday, November 2 from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. in Room 252 of Candler’s Rita Anne Rollins Building. The forum will also be presented via Zoom Webinar. Register here to attend in person or online.
This year’s forum will feature two Atlanta-based leaders in theological education: Christine J. Hong, associate professor of educational ministry at Columbia Theological Seminary, and Candace Lewis, president-dean of Gammon Theological Seminary at the Interdenominational Theological Center.
Christine J. Hong earned her ThM and MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary and her PhD from Claremont School of Theology. Her research interests include anti-colonial and decolonial approaches to religious and interreligious education, as well as Asian American spiritualties, Korean Musok, and the spiritual and theological formation of children and adolescents among BIPOC communities. Ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Hong has spent time as both as a religious educator and youth and young adult minister in New York and Southern California. She is the author of numerous articles, chapters in books, and two monographs: Youth, Identity, and Gender in the Korean American Church (Palgrave, 2015) and Decolonial Futures: Intercultural and Interreligious Intelligence for Theological Education (Lexington Books, 2021).
Candace M. Lewis is the 17th president-dean of Gammon Theological Seminary at the Interdenominational Theological Center, and the first female president-dean in the seminary’s 138 year history. Lewis earned her MDiv from Gammon and her DMin from Wesley Theological Seminary. An ordained elder in the Florida Conference of The United Methodist Church, she began her ministry as a churchplanter and is the founding pastor of New Life Community United Methodist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, where she served from 1997 to 2009. She then served as executive director of Path1 New Church Starts for The UMC’s Discipleship Ministries, and most recently as district superintendent of the Gulf Central Area of the Florida Conference from 2016 to 2021. Lewis was elected a clergy delegate to the 2004 and 2008 General and Southeastern Jurisdictional Conferences of The UMC. She is the co-author with Rodney Thomas Smothers of the church leadership resource Resurgence: Navigating the Changing Ministry Landscape (Heritage Publishing, 2019).