"As people are leaving formal institutions—they're no longer members of a congregation—it doesn't mean that their spirituality no longer exists. They're still looking for community. They're still looking for mentorship and intergenerational connection. And for most of them they still believe in God or a higher power," says Casper ter Kuile, HDS Ministry Innovation Fellow.

With a $40,000 grant, Don Abram, MDiv '19, has embarked on a project he calls “Pride in the Pews.” He plans to collect 66 stories of Black queer Christians—66, he notes, is the number of books in the Bible—in the hopes that the stories will open closed minds.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice, and yet last night I found myself in 2021—56 years later—still asking the question King asked,” the Rev. Willie Bodrick II, MDiv '14, said in a recent sermon. “How long?”