As I reflect on life at the Iliff School of Theology in 2025, I cannot envision our future separate and apart from the ranging attitudes and actions that are sweeping the nation.  Disenfranchisement and forced assimilation have intensified across the nation driven by a spiritual impulse to revive economic growth.  In some ways, this present time feels like a revival movement to return our nation to its colonial past.  From the perspective of American religious history, America experienced the Second Great Awakening on the heels of the Colonial Era which was marked by revivalism.  To the extent that history runs in cycles, “Project 2025” might be interpreted as some promoting a “Third Great Awakening” with diminishing returns to colonialism.  Yet rather than advocating being awake, there is the advocation to sleep with appeals to be “anti-Woke.”  What does all this mean for Iliff, a school that affirms decolonialism?  

Iliff was founded in 1892 by devout Methodists during the Post-Reconstruction Era, in the Gilded Age, which included all the dynamics of Western Expansion like migration, immigration, industrialization, economic growth, disenfranchisement, forced assimilation, and devastation.  Empowered by the doctrine of discovery and manifest destiny, Western expansion meant “conquering” and “civilizing” the land.  Whereas this was also the time of the Social Gospel Movement in the eastern part of the country, religious calls for social transformation likewise influenced the western settlers.

In response to the movement to remake America, I suggest we reaffirm our spiritual and religious beliefs.  To quote Langston Hughes, “I (We), too, sing America.”  And adjoining Hughes with Martin Luther’s statement of faith, “Here I (We) stand.  I (We) can do no other.”  And as a theological school of the United Methodist Church, I must also look to John Wesley who declared, “I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist . . . . unless they (do not) hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out.”  Iliff is poised to live our commitments with new vitality; and we are leaning into inviting a variety of communities to join our Purpose, Vision, and Commitments.

The Contemporary American Era, in which we now live, has been variously identified as a “Post-Civil Rights Era,” “Neo-Reconstruction Era,” and “Reverse Discrimination Era.”  The ideologies that have been reframing our national discourse say that multiplicity is an enemy of the nation-state.  Legendary former Iliff professor, Dr. Vincent Harding, asked the question, “Is America possible?”  Engaging that question theologically, Iliff continues to stand for the dignity of all.  Our working agenda is spiritual, intersectional, intergenerational, intercultural, and interreligious.  Iliff remains dedicated to educating leaders to be critical thinkers committed to their communities of origin and respectful collaborators while building relationships across perceived barriers.  Working to end hate, which Howard Thurman defined as “contact without fellowship,” Iliff is encouraging new partnerships and collaborations as we extend our hands in fellowship to all who are interested in human flourishing.  And, as Pauli Murray declared, “True community is based upon equality, mutuality, and reciprocity.”  We will continue to invite people from diverse communities to become a part of Iliff as a place of welcome where all people belong.

Iliff has a history of contextual scholarly education that attends to community building across lines of difference, trauma, and moral injury.  We will live 2025 by implementing a new curriculum taught on a semester system.  We will launch four new Concentrations to support our degree programs and to develop non-degree certificate programs.  We will continue to develop intercultural relationships across America’s multiplicity.  We desire to make an impact across this nation and around the globe.  Iliff’s faculty is Jewish, Asian descended, European American, African American, and Latine with scholarship that bears witness to the stories of the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island and other nations.  We have the scholarly and critical capacity through our commitments, programs, centers, and institutes to transform social life with creative and innovative conversations guided by our work in the areas of ministry leadership, community activism, artificial intelligence, eco-justice, queer hermeneutics, politics and culture, mental health, end-of-life care, and organizational effectiveness.

At the time I began as Iliff’s President, the Supreme Court of the United States reversed policy commitments to Affirmative Action.  While definitions of what it means to be American and to live in the United States of America are seemingly reshaped daily, Iliff remains committed to being an educational haven and community of nurture setting us apart as a theological graduate school with commitments to faith and culture.  Iliff remains a refuge for people victimized and traumatized by the religious politics of heteronormativity, homophobia, and transphobia.  With our tagline, “We Advocate Freedom,” Iliff engenders community for people to declare who they are and who they are becoming.  We will live in 2025 with the full recognition of the urgency of our times and continue to be an educational community with commitments to social justice and inclusiveness.

May love and justice be our guide this year!

Sincerely,

Rev. Dr. Lee Butler, Jr.

President and CEO

Iliff School of Theology