announcing the common life fellows
a new community of christian leaders
I am incredibly excited to share the first cohort of Common Life Fellows. This cohort of outstanding Christian leaders will lead a growing community of Christian leaders from across the country: The Good Road Network.
The Good Road Network (GRN) is an innovative online community that seeks to offer a space for Christians across America to faithfully, critically, and constructively navigate today's complex issues of faith and public life.
Drawn from the First Nations Bible Translation, which translates the “Kingdom of God” as the “Creator’s Good Road,” the Good Road Network (GRN) provides a formative space for Christians to envision a more loving, hospitable, and generous faith practice in our world today. The Kingdom of God is deeply social; it is a visible cultural community embodying the moral virtues of the Christian life in the world. The GRN supports and connects Christians who want to live out this way of life well.
This learning laboratory includes emerging experts and lay leaders in diverse fields including healthcare, law, business, theology, public policy, ethics, pastoral ministry, and social activism with the ambition to build bridges, seek justice, make peace, and educate the church. Participants range from undergraduate students to emerging leaders in the church and society.
Want to join the Good Road Network and learn from the incredible folks below? Sign up here.
—
Matthew 6:9-10 (FNV)
O Great Spirit, our Father from above,
we honor your name as sacred and holy.
Bring your good road to us,
where the beauty of your ways in the spirit-world above
is reflected in the earth below.
Gavin Chase
(he/him) is a writer and editor from Chicago. He is currently working on a Master of Divinity at Princeton Theological Seminary, where his research includes the intersections of religion, society, and ecology, primarily engaging constructive theology and decolonial theory. In addition to his studies, Gavin works as associate editor for God Here & Now Magazine at the Center for Barth Studies as well as tends the chickens at Princeton's Farminary Project. He and his wife Katie reside in Princeton, NJ, and cherish life with their young daughter Robin. Gavin loves making music with friends, writing and reading poetry, crying to good films, drinking beer, and the endless journey of learning to garden.
has spent nearly a decade working with international nonprofits supporting global peacebuilding, currently serving as the Director of Communications and Christian Engagement at The Telos Group, a DC-based multi-faith peacemaking nonprofit focused on transforming conflict in Israel/Palestine and the US. He has degrees in Economics, Political Science, and Philosophy, graduating with highest distinction from the Honors College of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Outside of Telos, David serves on the board of Peace Catalyst International and is a Core Team member of the Christian Peacebuilding Network. As an American of Syrian descent, David is passionate about conflict transformation in the Middle East and the transformative potential of Christians participating in peacebuilding around the globe. He has spent time living and working in East Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East, and writes about peace, theopoetics, and imagination on his substack, “Awakenings.”
Annah Kuriakose
is a recent Princeton Seminary graduate (MTS, Biblical Studies) who came to seminary trained as a teacher and physician. Her work has focused on creating equitable access to health and education for underserved populations, with a particular passion for curating conditions and curricula to support physical, mental, and spiritual health. Her theological interests include the Hebrew Bible, theology of the body, and liberation theologies. Fun fact: during seminary, she also took up improv and boxing. Hot take: physiology should be taught in seminary.
(he/him) is a theologian and composer from Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, who works at the intersections of theology, politics, and the arts. His writing has appeared in Sojourners, Christianity Today, Geez Magazine, and Bittersweet Monthly, among other outlets. In 2021, he released a piano-based record called After Supper, a set of musings on eucharistic decay and the poetic nature of faith.
Ryan Snyder
is a graduate student at Villanova University where he studies the United States in the World during the twentieth century, focusing on the dynamics of global capitalism in theories and practices of economic development. He is currently an intern at the Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest.
is a student of divinity and the history of Christianity at The University of Chicago Divinity School. A Chicago resident by way of West Virginia, she holds a B.A. in Theology and is a Disciples Divinity House Scholar at The University of Chicago. An avid lover of all things history, Emma works in the Research Archives of The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures while she trains to be a medievalist. When she is not reading or writing about medieval ecology and cosmology or women's spirituality, she enjoys long walks on Lake Michigan, exploring her city, and stimulating conversations over iced chai lattes.