Honors

In 2018, I was honored to receive the Torda450 Sermon Award from the UU Partner Church Council, the International Council of UUs, and the UUA International Office. This was for a sermon marking the 450th anniversary of the Edict of Torda, a landmark of religious freedom. The sermon was originally delivered at Westside UU Church in January 2018 (the anniversary month). As the contest winner, I had the great pleasure of joining the first-ever ministers' pilgrimage to Transylvania in July 2018. I shared the sermon with my colleagues at the closing of a joint retreat of N. American and Hungarian Unitarian ministers at "the fortress church," an 800+ year old church in Transylvania, Romania (as pictured here).

Earlier, while preparing for ministry, I received a number of scholarships and awards in recognition of my promise for this vocation. I am particularly grateful to have been chosen as the Spencer and Susan Lavan Scholar at Meadville Lombard Theological School (2012-2015). 

In my second year of theological school, I received the Chautauqua Award for an Outstanding Student from Meadville Lombard (2014). It was an honor to serve as minister-of-the-week to the UU fellowship at the Chautauqua Institute in New York that summer, preaching in the Hall of Philosophy and sharing conversation with UUs at the Unitarian Universalist House on campus.

Accepting honors at graduation

The UUA also recognized me twice (2013-2014 and 2014-2015) with the Olympia Brown and Max Kapp Award, for a sermon or paper related to our Universalist heritage. At graduation, I accepted two awards:  the Charles Billings Prize for Scholarship, and the John Godbey History Prize, for my paper, "A Religion for One World:  Kenneth L. Patton, the Charles Street Meeting House, and the New Universalism." Drawing upon this work, I later served as a contributor to the series A Documentary History of Unitarian Universalism, edited by Dan McKanan and published by Skinner House Books (2017).