We are having a town hall meeting to discuss new developments and receive your input concerning the M.Div. program here at the Washington DC campus. We will discuss: our new M.Div. curriculum, the new 9:37 Scholarship, possible new class scheduling formats, other matters related to the M.Div. The meeting will begin promptly at 7:05PM (immediately following Hebrew class) in The Lodge. Dinner will be provided.

RSVP to gsackett@rts.edu so we can have an appropriate amount of food. This meeting is open to anyone who is interested in the M.Div. program at the Washington, D.C. campus of RTS.

Dr. Daniel Dreisbach who will speak on the Wall of Separation Between Church and State will be our guest speaker. Dr. Dreisbach is a national expert on this subject, speaking throughout the country on the subject. His book, Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State, has be become required reading in conservative circles.

Dr. Dreisbach is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C. He received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1985 from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a Juris Doctor degree in 1988 from the University of Virginia. Following law school, he served as a judicial clerk for Circuit Judge Robert F. Chapman of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and for two years he practiced public interest law specializing in civil and religious liberties. Dreisbach is author of Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State (New York University Press, 2002). He is also a Ruling Elder in the PCA.

This two credit course will examine how Christians should think about and respond to their own suffering and the suffering of fellow Christians. We will explore the phenomenology of suffering and especially of suffering that is profound enough that it tends to disorient and discombobulate us. We will then seek to discover what Scripture says about how Christian sufferers should orient themselves to their suffering by clarifying the relationship between God’s sovereignty and our suffering and between our suffering and our growth in godliness. All of this will help us to understand how we ought to suffer and what we can hope to receive through our suffering. There will be readings from Scripture, theology, and philosophy. The class will meet at the McLean campus Monday-Friday, 9:00am-5pm May 26-28.