The Faith to Question
04-04-2022
May graduates, Christine Chang, Jim Cochrane, and Robbie Craig reflect on their McCormick journey and find that faith may not always provide answers, but it’s always an invitation to growth and change.
Early in his Master of Divinity program, Jim Cochrane remembers a professor telling a class, “The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.” The statement became a guidepost for Cochrane as he wrestled with questions of faith, community, race, and social justice in the presence of people who had different life experiences and were from different denominations and cultures.
“There is so much polarization in the world and the demonization of anybody who is not part of ‘my camp,’” says Cochrane who grew up attending Minneapolis’ Westminster Presbyterian Church. “My McCormick experience has caused me to focus on starting with curiosity and dialogue, looking through pastoral care lenses I’ve never seen through before, and leading with love.”
Cochrane expected to be challenged academically and theologically and he was. “My beliefs were challenged,” he says, “not for me to conform to a set of uniform beliefs, but for faith to be strengthened and authentic community built.” The challenge now is to bring that openness into the places where he will serve and live, Cochrane adds. That will call for “seeing churches as safe places for people to wrestle with the questions,” he says, “and offering such a model to the larger community.”
Questions about the intersection of faith, race and justice drew Christine Chang to a book by McCormick professor Dr. Reggie Williams, and through Chicago’s Association of Theological Schools, she enrolled in one of his courses. Wanting to learn more about McCormick’s commitment to justice and participate in its ecumenical experience, Chang transferred to McCormick. “Every class stretched my embedded perspectives,” says Chang, who will earn her Master’s in Theological Studies. “It’s what I was hoping for, and yet it was not always easy.”
Having her beliefs stretched was a challenge that Chang reframed as growth and expansion. “I had been shaped to think about mission or call as trying to accomplish a particular thing for a good cause,” she explains, “call was very cause driven. I had worked in healthcare for over a decade and felt that my call was to serve those who didn’t have access to high-quality healthcare. That’s expanded. We are all called to life…to love…it’s a universal call. It seems very basic, but for me it was a foundational shift in thinking.”
It had been 10 years since Robbie Craig had earned her Master of Divinity degree and she had no intention to go back to school. “But I got a notice in the mail from McCormick, and I made the mistake of opening it,” jokes Craig, who will receive her Doctor of Ministry degree in May. “The information about the doctoral program sounded like what I needed to know to do the work I was doing right at that time.”
As the then interim director of the Community Renewal Society, Craig wanted to know more about sharing the difference between charity and justice with community and church leaders. “Too often we get involved in charitable acts,” stresses Craig, the current Chicago voter coordinator for Live Free. “We feed the hungry and cloth the poor but questioning the systems that put people in those situations never get touched. I could see how being part of this doctoral program wouldn’t be theory for me; I could apply it to life.”
The challenge of grassroots work, Craig points out, is bringing people together to work in concert. “Leaders working together – from the church, community and politics – can be an effective approach,” she says. “The work I do with Live Free is aimed at reducing violence, but part of that work includes community stability and resources. This I see as the work of the church. When we bring people together to care for and provide access to services for the least of these, we open our lives and the work we do to be empowered by the love of God.”
McCormick’s 188th Commencement will be held Saturday, May 7.
Christine Chang
Jim Cochrane
Robbie Craig