2025 Hawkinson Award Ceremony and Gala

The Leadership Center for Social Justice at United is delighted to invite you to the 2025 Hawkinson Award Ceremony and Gala! The event takes place at United on Friday, October 10, 2025, starting at 6:00 PM CT. There is also an option to participate online. Join us for an evening of festivities to celebrate our 2025 Hawkinson Scholars and recipients of the Hawkinson Honorary Award. Together, we will honor Rev. Vince Hawkinson’s peace and justice legacy and the Hawkinson Fund for Peace and Justice’s powerful impact over 36 years.  During the event, we are delighted to be welcoming Kavyesh Kaviraj, an acclaimed jazz pianist, composer, and arranger from Oman. Since moving to Minneapolis in 2016, Kaviraj has been enjoying opportunities to perform for his growing fan base. He is also an adjunct faculty member at St. Thomas University, where he teaches jazz piano. Before the program starts, we will host a reception. Arrive early to enjoy light appetizers and beverages, music, artwork, and a silent auction. If you have any questions, please contact Grace Pennings Guenthner at hawkinson@unitedseminary.edu.  Meet Our 2025 Honorary Awardees Lyn and John Pegg Ever since Lyn and John Pegg met in New York City in 1963, their shared dedication to peace and justice has sustained their work and life. John was in the Marine Corp at the time and growing disillusioned with the inhumanity of war, and Lyn had her college degree and was working in a lab. Their life took a turn in the 1970s when John attended Hartford Seminary (now Hartford International University for Religion and Peace) and accepted a call to a UCC church in upstate New York. Lyn began organizing to promote women’s rights. In the mid-1980s, the Peggs moved from the East Coast to accept a call at Peace UCC in Duluth, Minnesota—a church that prioritizes peace and justice work. While there, Lyn worked as a manager of a social service agency and created an interfaith anti-racism organization. In addition to pastoring, John became a leader of the local Veterans for Peace chapter. The couple has also led dozens of delegations to Latin American countries to draw attention to how U.S. foreign policy and corporate practices have adversely affected their lives.“Collective activism for justice,” the Peggs note, “is both effective and sustainable—and gives us hope.” Thom and Diane Haines Thom and Diane Haines were deeply affected by the horrors of the Vietnam War. They both protested and advocated for peace during this time, and it shaped their collective commitment to justice. Diane describes taking to the street in protest as “a vital piece of the biblical mandate to welcome the stranger.” Like John, Thom served as a parish pastor for an ELCA church. For most of his career, however, he was an assistant county attorney in Carver County, Minnesota. Diane has been a social worker for decades, most recently as a mental health case manager in Scott County, Minnesota. In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, Thom and Diane traveled to Guatemala, where they learned about forces of oppression and the role that US policy has played. In 2013, they were executive producers of a powerful documentary— Gold Fever—that contrasts nature-reverent Indigenous spirituality with the predatory capitalism of gold mining companies. The Haines’ experiences in Guatemala, as well as Honduras, Mexico, El Salvador, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Haiti, and the Philippines, also heightened their passion for helping marginalized communities and working to ameliorate the plight of migrants. Register Note: We are aware of and working quickly to resolve an intermittent issue with our form vendor. If you experience any difficulties registering, please wait a couple of minutes and refresh the page. If you still encounter a problem, contact Andrew Fox at afox@unitedseminary.edu, and he will ensure you are registered. We regret any inconvenience.

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