For Immediate Release

Princeton Seminary Students Make Mission Trips to Gulf Coast

Princeton, NJ, December 21, 2005– Two groups of Princeton Theological Seminary students will travel to the Gulf Coast this January to do Hurricane Katrina relief work. One group of 13 students will do cleanup work in Gautier, Mississippi, with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) January 14–21. This group of interested students contacted Cathy Cook Davis, the Seminary’s director of student relations, in the fall and began meeting together to plan the trip. “I am delighted with their initiative,” Davis said. The students raised their own funds through a letter-writing campaign and with donations from their home churches, professors, and other seminarians who could not travel with them. The campus group Seminarians for Peace and Justice also donated proceeds from their annual Alternative Christmas Gift Fair. 

“What is particularly exciting is that two of the students in the group are international students,” said Nicole Howard, M.Div. junior and one of the trip’s organizers. “These students, one from Germany and one from India, want to participate in the mission trip not only to help God’s people in the Gulf, but also to send a message of hope to their families and friends in their home countries who have also experienced recent natural disasters.” This group will make a second mission trip to the Gulf Coast in September. 

The second group, led by Davis and associate professor of Old Testament Chip Dobbs-Allsopp, also includes 13 students. As part of his class on biblical interpretation in a postmodern world, Dobbs-Allsopp encouraged students to propose a final project that would apply concepts studied in the class. Several students suggested a hurricane relief trip, which Dobbs-Allsopp supported. This group will head to Gulfport, Mississippi, from January 16–22 to work with PDA doing cleanup work, removing walls, appliances, and furniture damaged by the storm. They raised funds through a benefit concert and silent auction in November, as well as a letter campaign.   

The focus of the class was to think “about the lenses through which we view Scripture, and how events such as Hurricane Katrina affect our readings,” said Camille Cook, M.Div. middler and a student in the class.” Many of the readings for class and much of our discussion revolved around what might be the proper reaction to the victims of such disasters. We do not, naively, think we offer something new, better, or different.  What we offer is ourselves, to stand in solidarity with the people, not pitying them but suffering alongside of them, and, hopefully, offering a message that God, too, has not deserted them, but in their pain suffers and in their joy rejoices.”