2024 Hosanna Project Featured Speaker & Student Award
This year we welcomed a group of 11 participants from around the country to learn more about the parallels between the Stop Cop City Movement in Atlanta, GA and the settler colonial occupation of Israel on Palestinian lands. 2024 had us back in person and meeting up together in Atlanta, Georgia, this time in conjunction with the PJN annual meeting, with the theme: Palestine in Focus.
Again we decided to pivot our award money to a fabulous keynote speaker, Rev. Joi R. Orr, PhD who gave us an insightful message about prophetic witness and the intersection of Palestinian liberation and the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta. Read the full event report here.
Given the nature of the moment we are currently in, we also elected to grant an award to one of our seminarian participants, Naomi McQuiller, for her organizing work on Columbia Theological Seminary’s campus. We are elated to see how our work on prophetic witness has informed the student uprisings of 2023 and beyond.
Naomi McQuiller (she/hers) is a native of Sumter, South Carolina and is a member of Sumter Second Presbyterian Church. Naomi is a student at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA. She holds a B.A. in Individualized Studies with minors in Educational Studies and Peace, Justice, and Conflict Resolution Studies from Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC. Naomi also received her M.Ed. in Learning, Diversity, and Urban Studies from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. When seeking renewal, Naomi enjoys attending plays and musicals, playing with her Pomeranian, Zeus, and spending time with friends and family. You can read a confession she wrote for our PJN Advent series here.
Rev. Joi R. Orr, PhD (Keynote Speaker)
Dr. Joi Orr (she/her) is the Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics and Director of the Earthseed Institute at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, GA. She earned a PhD in Religion from Emory University, where she matriculated through the Ethics and Society course of study. Dr. Orr teaches social and womanist ethics as it pertains to social movements for food sovereignty, land security, and environmental justice. Her recent online publication, “Food Sovereignty,” for the Political Theology Network uses critical theory to explore an African American movement for food sovereignty as a revolutionary Afro-Christian striving for collective self-determination.
Her forthcoming publication for the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, “Reclaiming the Radical Imagination: Food Sovereignty and Land Security for Black Liberation,” presents an ethnographic study of a food sovereignty collective in Baltimore, Maryland – The Black Church Food Security Network (the Network). In presenting the work of the Network, Dr. Orr hopes to encourage scholars to reclaim the radical imagination – an Afro-Christian hope that identifies Black liberation as Black folk (re)connected to the land in ways that promote the survival and flourishing of all peoples and the environment.
When she isn’t writing or teaching, Dr. Orr spends her time outside. She is currently funded to enjoy the great outdoors by the Wabash Center for Learning and Teaching in Theology and Religion. Her project, “Imagining Otherwise: Ecopraxis for African American Religious Pedagogy,” affords her time to engage in a variety of nature-based activities to enrich her teaching. From camping, to hiking, visiting apiaries (beehives!), and foraging medicinal herbs, she is modeling the practices she hopes to inspire her students to engage.
Teaching Faculty in 2024
Rev. Addie Domske, M.Div, MSW (Co-Chair)
Deanna (Dee) Roberts, MA, MDiv, MILS (Co-Chair)
Dr. Elizabeth Corrie, PhD, MDiv
Rev. Marietta V. Macy, MDiv.
Dr. Tyler Mayfield, PhD