Louisville Institute releases list of grant award winners
The Layman, July 23, 2012
A program based at one of the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s flagship seminaries has announced a list of grant award winners whose projects run the gamut from Christian living to jazz music’s effect on pastoral ministry to the issue of “male traumas.”
The Louisville Institute, based at Louisville Seminary, released a list of grant awards made under its academic programs as well as a call for scholars to apply for future grants.
Funded in part by the Lilly Endowment, the program offers the following grants, among others:
The Pastoral Study Project Program offers ministerial leaders the “opportunity to conduct serious investigation of issues related to Christian life, faith and ministry.”
Recipients for 2011 include: Symposium for Spiritual Midwifery, Stephen Faller of Capital Health. The symposium will explore that idea that “Socratic irony can be an insightful hermeneutic into the ministry and teachings of Jesus” and will seek to discover “what kinds of possibilities the art of spiritual midwifery holds for pastoral care.”
Peter W. Marty of Saint Paul Lutheran Church of Davenport, Iowa, received a grant to develop A No-Nonsense Guide to the Christian Life. The guide is designed to “create a primer on faith, specifically with regard to the habits, practices and perspectives that a person can fashion for enjoying the Christian life in all of its abundance.”
“Might we think of the Christian life as comprised of dispositions of heart and mind that are formed in us by Biblically-rich faith practices, influences of deep relationships shaped by the different contours of community, and decisions we make that indicate that the Word has indeed found a home in flesh and blood?” Marty said in his abstract.
John P. Moulder of the Arts Alliance of the Archdiocese of Chicago received a grant to author: The Improvised Life: A Conversation between Pastoral Ministry and Jazz Music. The study will include “readings focused upon improvisation in ministry, theology and improvisation and jazz improvisation.”
The Institute’s Sabbatical Grants for Pastoral Leaders Program has been discontinued. It was designed to provide “pastors and other religious leaders with sustained time for rest, renewal and reflective engagement with their life and work and issues related to contemporary religious leadership.” An example of its output includes The Peace of Wild Things, Women Clergy, Wilderness and Writing by Anita Amstutz of Albuquerque Mennonite Church. “During this sabbatical, I will go into the wilderness with my husband, where we both find solace for the soul of our marriage and individually,” Amstutz said. “This grant will give me three months of uninterrupted time for my passions of creative writing at the intersection of my life as a woman in religious life, immersed in the natural world.”
The Project Grant for Researchers Program “supports a diverse range of research and research-related projects undertaken in the interest of believing communities.”
Mark Chaves of Duke University will use the grant to work on A Proposal to Enhance the Third Wave of the National Congregations Study. The data-gathering project will seek to gather “high-quality national sample of approximately 1,300 congregations in 2012 by interviewing a key informant, usually a clergyperson, in each congregation.”
The Institute’s Dissertation Fellowship Program provides grants for the final year of doctoral dissertation writing “for students engaged in research pertaining to North American Christianity, especially projects with the potential to strengthen the religious life of North American Christians and their institutions.”
Wen Reagan of Duke University will use the grant to complete Sing a New Song: A History of Contemporary Praise & Worship Music, 1970-2010.
“The embrace of rock and roll in American churches blurred the line between sanctuary and rock arena; [and] incorporated the logic and habits of mass media consumption into the worship life of American Christians,” Reagan wrote. “My project seeks to chronicle the historical rise of contemporary worship music and thus shed light on the myriad ways that rock music in worship has impacted American Christianity.”
Application information about the Louisville Institute can be found here. According to its mission statement, the Institute exists “to nurture inquiry and conversation regarding the character, problems, contributions, and prospects of the historic institutions and commitments of American Christianity.”