MRPL Internal Report Summary and Student Highlights

Reflections on the Inaugural Year

At the start of the fall 2021 semester, Harvard Divinity School welcomed its first class of candidates for the one-year Master of Religion and Public Life (MRPL), the School’s first new degree program since the Master of Theological Studies was introduced more than 50 years ago. Drawing on the RPL’s foundational principles in religious literacy and just peace, the MRPL supports experienced professionals from a wide range of backgrounds to promote a robust and capacious understanding of the power of religion in human experience and contemporary global affairs.

Reflecting on the year, RPL Faculty Director Diane L. Moore noted: “The expertise that each MRPL candidate brought to our work together was generative and inspiring for members of the cohort and for others at HDS and beyond. The projects represent a remarkable array of talents and approaches that illustrate what candidates learned here at HDS about the power and complexity of religion relevant to their spheres. The collaborative vision for the program was realized as we all wrestled with the questions of what just peace entails in differing professional/vocational contexts and what a more nuanced understanding of religion can offer to enhance just peacebuilding efforts.”

MRPL '22 Student Highlights

Ans Irfan, MD, EdD, DrPH, MPH, MRPL ’22

“The MRPL has been a life-changing experience for me, personally and professionally, such that it shattered many of my assumptions around how the world works—especially when it comes to the normalized assumption of secularity as irreligious, the separation of church and state, and the distinction between devotional expression of religion versus the study of religion. It was a profoundly generative space to imagine fresh ways of thinking, being, and praxis. RPL has equipped me with new analytical frameworks, not only to acknowledge and excavate the deeply embedded influence of religion in all aspects of our modern life in and out of the United States, but also to generate alternatives rooted in global health equity and dismantling structural racism. I am much richer due to this experience, which will continue to inform my work until my time has come. RPL’s just peace foundation invites us to ask what I have always asked myself: What is public health if not the unapologetic quest for collective human flourishing?”

Rev. Erica N. Williams, MDiv, MRPL ’22

“I truly believe what I said when we first came here that we were the Avengers. I said that all of us have come from different parts of the world, to learn more, so that when we go back to our parts of the world, we will be able to help to avenge and to bring healing and justice to earth. I know that we all will leave this place and do some great—even greater—things. I think HDS has given me a lot of tools to go back into the world to be very bold, courageous, and uncompromising: uncompromising in making this nation one that reckons with the things that have happened, but also one that begins to repair what has happened. I have been doing the work of social justice for over 20 years. Through my HDS courses, I have identified that I am a womanist ethicist. This year I have become laser-focused on the plight of poor Black women. I am grateful for the resources that I have had access to this year, as they have given me the foundation needed to launch the Set It Off Movement. I am excited about building this work that will be around for generations to come.”