Annual Report 2024-25: Master of Religion and Public Life

This year’s Master of Religion and Public Life (MRPL) cohort exemplified the best of HDS. A group of 10 students, representing a wide array of professional backgrounds (from politics to journalism, from the Shakespearean stage to the corporate boardroom), forged a remarkably cohesive intellectual community. In a dynamic semester, they remained committed to their capstone work and to the collaborative spirit of the program.

The resulting projects included:

1. A guide to reinvesting American politics with moral purpose
2. A judicial decision tree for more compassionate adjudication of family-court cases
3. A memoir addressing the physiological, theological, and sociological influence of fear
4. A one-man play interweaving Othello with the life of a modern Alabaman making his way through the white supremacist South
5. An album of original music, lyrically inspired by Islamic devotion and charting the vocal changes of a gender transition
6. A restorative-justice framework for accountability and healing in church sexual abuse
7. A visual exhibit situating moments of artistic self-discovery with the aphoristic insights of Howard Thurman, Tracey Hucks, and W.E.B. DuBois
8. A theory of spiritual self-care for those engaged in the sometimes depleting work of local government and community organizing
9. Two complementary projects engaging with the ethical dangers of artificial intelligence

These seemingly disparate projects coalesced around a shared language of moral imagination and clearly benefitted from the environment of peer suggestion and support that is the hallmark of the MRPL program.