News & Interviews
Conflict: The Joys and Challenges
In this webinar, we will discuss the importance of conflict transformation and the recent collaborative training on conflict transformation. We will be joined by Michelle Armster, executive director of MCC Central States, Rev. Dr. Jacob Alan Cook, who teaches Christian ethics and peace theology and co-directs the Shalom Collaboratory at EMS, and Hyacinth Stevens, executive director of MCC East Coast. Together, we will explore the training and discuss the future steps they envision for providing ongoing training to congregations and institutions.
Mennonite organizations collaborate on conflict transformation training
Mennonite Church USA, Mennonite Central Committee Central States and Eastern Mennonite Seminary provided an in-person conflict transformation training to 17 participants on Sept. 26-28, 2024, in Akron, Pennsylvania. The training was a potential model for future training sessions that will be offered more widely in the next year or two. The training was led by Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz, MC USA denominational minister for Peace and Justice and Michelle Armster, MDiv, executive director of MCC Central States, with input from Rev. Dr. Jacob Alan Cook, who teaches Christian ethics and peace theology and co-directs the Shalom Collaboratory at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, and Jim Amstutz, retired pastor/Bible teacher.
Interview on Conflict Transformation & Tough Conversations
As the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election draws nearer, the VAUMC will share resources with the conference on topics ranging from how to have hard conversations to the impact on community organizing and advocacy in light of the current social and political climate, a climate that local churches and individuals must navigate as people of faith. More conversations are coming this month. In this conversation, Rev. Dr. Jacob Alan Cook, Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics and Co-Director of The Shalom Collaboratory at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, talks with Madeline White, VAUMC Director of Communications, on conflict transformation.
Seminary’s new Lilly-funded conflict transformation program names new leadership
Eastern Mennonite Seminary’s new interdisciplinary pastoral leadership program focused on conflict transformation will be led by Jacob Cook, PhD, formerly of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity. Cook began his new role in January 2023. He will lead the development of programming funded by a Lilly Endowment, Inc., grant of $998,606. The award is part of Lilly’s Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative, designed to help theological schools across the United States and Canada respond to the most pressing challenges they face in preparing pastoral leaders for today and the future. The new pastoral leadership program will integrate personal spiritual formation, biblical and theological frameworks and conflict transformation skills.
CBF Conversations Podcast: Whiteness & the Future of Evangelical Faith
What’s the intersection of church and race? Most churches are ethnically homogenous. Rarely do you find a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural church, especially in the American South. In the South, this is a product of slavery and segregation. However, it goes much deeper than that, especially since we are over 60 years removed from the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil Rights Act, and the end of segregation from a legal standpoint. Where does identity fit into the conversation? More specifically, how does the concept of whiteness influence all of this?
Faith and Capital Podcast: Worldview, Freedom and the Purpose of Work
Jacob Alan Cook, author of Worldview Theory, Whiteness and the Future of Evangelical Faith, joins Chase Tibbs for the final Faith and Capital interview! We discuss worldviewing, ideology, the limits of our knowledge and freedom.
Homebrewed Christianity Podcast: Is the “Christian Worldview” a Supremacist Grift?
Dr. Jacob Alan Cook investigates how people move from an ideas-based sense of security about who they are and what they are doing in the world toward a more vibrant, relational posture of faith. He is actively studying and experimenting with creative practices for Christian moral formation in both the academy and local church-communities. Cook’s first book, Worldview Theory, Whiteness, and the Future of Evangelical Faith, is out now along with a series of articles on Baptist News Global introducing its hypothesis.
Evangelicals do battle with “critical race theory” in new online video course
In the right’s all-hands-on-deck crusade against “critical race theory,” there’s a job for everyone: movement intellectuals and keyboard warriors, school board brawlers and politicians — from Congress to the governors’ mansions down to the new class of local right-wing bureaucrats eager to link student test scores to faculty demographics. So it’s no surprise that there’s a role for church folks as well.