My name is Yuki Schwartz (they/them pronouns), and I am the Assistant Professor of Constructive and Political Theologies, and the Associate Dean of Academics and Assessment at Claremont School of Theology. I was ordained to Christian ministry in the United Church of Christ, but I have had a long and deep relationship with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), which began when I met this wonderful denomination as I entered Phillips Theological Seminary and ended up completing a Master of Divinity degree. As a new transplant to the Los Angeles area, I am a new member at First United Church of Christ Second Life, a church that takes place in the real yet virtual world of the Second Life platform, but I also have been attending All People’s Christian Church as my real yet physical church (though currently through its online worship services and am looking forward to meeting the folks there in-person soon!).
As faculty at CST, I teach and learn with students about decolonial, postcolonial, anti-racist, queer, and liberative theologies. I’m especially passionate about learning about theologies that are the “second act” of liberative and revolutionary praxis, which comes after people act in the world by building relationships with one another in the fight for justice and finding God in the midst of their interconnected struggles.
As an administrator, I do the back-end work of sorting class schedules and classroom assignments, creating and adjusting school policies, evaluating curricula, and other tasks, but I try to do them in ways that ensure that justice, compassion, and belonging are present alongside academic rigor. I came to CST as a Louisville Institute postdoctoral scholar (and still am for the 2022-23 school year) and was excited to come here to be a part of the CST work of progressive, interreligious, and justice-centered theological education. I’ve also been grateful and humbled to be able to work at a school where so much groundbreaking scholarship and activism have been done. I know that I would not even be here as a pastor, scholar, or administrator, or Christian worker toward justice without the work of the many people who came before me, in the church, in the academy, and in the streets, and I am committed to carrying on and honoring what they have done by passing their knowledge on, so that the next generations of scholars, leaders, and organizers will continue moving the cosmos toward God’s love and justice.
That is my hope and goal for theological education, that it keeps forming and supporting communities of faithful and faith-filled leaders who know the powerful histories that shaped the roads they are traveling on, so that they will keep building the pathways toward a more loving tomorrow.