Art has the tremendous power to restore us in a time when our world seems to make no sense and we need a moment of respite and encouragement from our daily struggles. A single photograph of a flower or a laughing child can buoy our spirit to carry on. (more…)
Kim received a Master of Arts degree in theology, worship, and the arts from United in 1995. She is a tenured associate professor at the University of St. Thomas, teaching in the theology department with a focus on the arts. Her classes, which explore the intersection of theology and public health, integrate service learning into coursework. Due to her efforts in developing a service learning program, she was awarded the ‘Outstanding Faculty in Service Learning Award’ in 2006. (more…)
SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA, UNITED STATES, March 6, 2025. United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities is thrilled to announce the establishment of the Wilson Yates Chair of Theology and the Arts. This tenure-track, endowed faculty position will be made possible by gifts from a cadre of United friends, alums, and former faculty. (more…)
A physical theater and devising artist, Isabel Nelson (’24) traces her passion for theater back to childhood. “I have always been really compelled by story and the meaning that we make and drawn to what I call ‘old story’—folk tales, fairy tales, myth, etc.” At the same time, as a UCC minister’s child and a Macalester College liberal arts graduate (’04), Isabel is deeply concerned with social justice. At United, she affirmed the kinship between justice, religion, and story, and gained a greater sense of self. Finding United Though Isabel double majored in theater and religious studies during college, she says her religious studies degree was “much more of an intellectual interest than a personal call.” Instead, she undertook a two-year intensive physical theater training program in London. Transatlantic Love Affair, the company Isabel founded in 2010, “takes the seeds of an old story, and reimagines it into something really fresh and imaginative.” The plays have no props or set pieces; stories are conveyed by the actors’ movements, some dialogue, and imagination. (more…)
Born into a religious family, DMin student Rev. Canon Tyrone Fowlkes grew up in what he describes as, for years, “the only Black Wesleyan Church in Indiana—what I affectionately call the ‘old church.’” He credits his upbringing in the church for giving him “the faith for which I will always be grateful.” These days, however, Tyrone has moved past his conservative upbringing and embraced a vision of ministering through faith, justice, and art. “Growing up,” Tyrone remembers, “I had an acute awareness of mistreatment and injustice…and was particularly attuned…when it occurred in the church.” He guesses that a desire to call out unjust treatment of women and those in the LGBTQ+ community perhaps fueled his sense of call to ordination. “I had a burgeoning career as an art director,” Tyrone shares, “when I noticed what felt like a tug at my spirit.” In 1995, he enrolled in an MDiv program at Christian Theological Seminary (CTS)—affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)—in Indianapolis. (more…)
Black Vessel for a Saint sits on the southwest end of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden with an air of incongruous monumentality. A 20-foot-tall cylinder of coal-black bricks, the Vessel rests on a raised cement platform, with two long cement ramps leading to a pair of doorways. Inside the cylinder, one encounters a six-foot tall, roofing tar-blackened statue of Saint Lawrence, who holds a luxuriant quill pen in his right hand and a Bible in his left. According to the didactics accompanying the Vessel, Theaster Gates—a polymathic Chicago artist known for his urban revitalization efforts and use of reclaimed materials—intended the temple-like structure to serve as “a secular sacred sanctuary—a place open to all for gathering and reflection.” (more…)
The Stations of the Cross has its origins in the early Christian practice of visiting the sites of Jesus’ passion in Jerusalem. Over the centuries, it has since developed into a kind of mini- or local pilgrimage in which the faithful process through the fourteen stations, often represented by plaques or artwork within a church building. In a time of pandemic, we invite you to join us on an imaginative pilgrimage through the following artists' images, poems, and reflections. (more…)