From the Dean’s Desk

(The following address was given by Dean Gregory E. Sterling as the 2026 Commencement speech to the 128 YDS graduates, their friends, and YDS faculty and staff at Divinity Quadrangle on May 18, 2026.)

I have a tradition of inviting first-year students to lunch at the Deanery in small groups. This gives me an opportunity to meet each student individually and to hear any concerns they might have. After they introduce one another, I ask one standard question to open the conversation: What has most surprised you at YDS—whether good or ill? The most common answer that I receive is the sense of community. Students express this in various ways, including how friendly and supportive students are to one another and how accessible and genuine the faculty are in their concern for students. The chorus of voices who have expressed this are stating one of the major goals that we have as a school: we want to prepare people to build communities and try to do so by modeling a community. We do not offer our community as a perfect model but we make a serious effort to build community.

Why has the feeling of community surprised so many? In 2000, the Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam—who did his graduate work at Yale and became a member of your class today when he received an honorary doctorate from Yale—published Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, in which he examines the undermining of social networks or “social capital” in the last third of twentieth century America.[1] He used the metaphor of bowling—the most popular participatory sport in the US—to note that from 1980 to 1993 the total number of people bowling grew by 10 percent, but the number of people bowling in leagues declined by 40 percent.[2] Bowling is, of course, only an entrée point to the larger phenomenon of the loss of the social networks or social capital upon which American society has been built. It is reflected in the decline in civic or formal social participation, illustrated by the rapid rise of the Parent Teacher Association from its founding in 1910 until its rapid decline beginning in 1960 in which the percentage of participants fell by more than 50 percent.[3] Another way to put this is that everyone in my generation knows what the PTA is, but I am not sure that many of you graduating do—unless you have heard Jeannie C. Riley’s 1968 hit record “Harper Valley PTA.”

A Dinnertime Decline

We have not only witnessed a serious decline in our formal social networks, but in our informal social engagements as well. Two studies measuring the number of times Americans entertained or were entertained by friends fell by 45 percent in two decades from the 1970s to the 1990s.[4] This was not only true of friends but of families. Families ate dinner together far less: those who regularly ate dinner together declined by one-third from 1980 to 2000—from 50 percent to 34 percent.[5] And this is not the full story, since many more people now live alone than did so previously.

Putnam explained the shifts through generational change, the rise of electronic communication—especially television—and the process of suburbanization with long commutes and workdays. He updated the book in 2020 and continued to argue the same thesis—we are losing our social capital—but turned to the role of digital media rather than television. He could have named the revised edition Posting Alone. He observes that the internet and social media, which had the potential to create greater social capital, have paradoxically undermined it. The one exception to the broad trend towards a decline in social capital is the political arena, where the rate of participation is up, but so is polarization.

I think that Putnam is right: we have lost a great deal of our social capital. I am deeply concerned about the deterioration of the fabric that holds American democracy together. This is where you can make a difference. One of the most important goals of this school is to prepare people to build community, whether you do so in churches, nonprofits, schools, social programs, or corporations. I once said to a former senior fellow of the Yale Corporation that we were different than other schools at Yale because we train people to build communities. This came as a surprise to the senior fellow, just as it did to the students with whom I have had lunch. The fellow’s response was: You are not measured as a dean by how well you train people for building communities. Whether I am measured by this or not, I am committed to the value of community and to helping prepare students to form and lead them.

Voices from Ephesians

Why do we prioritize community? Collectively we have different motives. My motive is that I consider it a biblical ideal. At commencement, the text that Professor Braxton Shelley read from the Letter to the Ephesians is part of a vision by a later disciple of Paul who looked back on the Apostle’s life and recognized that Paul had helped to create a community out of very disparate parts.[6] The letter is a vision of that unified community. I like to think of it as God’s society in human society.

The author is not naïve about the challenges this poses. In the first exhortation of the paraenetic or applied section of the letter, the author urges us to live lives worthy of our calling. You were admitted to the most selective divinity school in the world and have now successfully completed your degree. This is a significant achievement and your families and friends have a right to be proud. However, it creates a responsibility for you. From this day forward, you represent the ideals of this school in your life. We, the faculty and staff and I, urge you to live a life that reflects our ideals. As you live, please remember this day with the faculty, staff, your colleagues, families, and friends around you. You represent us!

“Putting Up With One Another in Love”

The author of Ephesians goes on to remind us that a community requires humility, patience, and—to put it bluntly—putting up with one another in love. Every community—from the smallest family to an entire country—must learn this straightforward but challenging lesson. Those who promote themselves tend to be arrogant and totalitarian: they do not brook dissent. Why? They put the highest value on themselves, not on the community. You have learned to place high value on the community and to live with differences. You have not always agreed with Yale policies or my decisions, nor have I always agreed with your judgments. But we have sat with one another with patience and discussed our differences candidly. I cannot commend highly enough the students on the ad hoc committee of Student Government who met with me repeatedly to discuss a range of issues prompted by the Israel/Gaza war. Your ideals are laudable and your conduct was exemplary. Our society has lost too much of the spirit you demonstrated in these conversations; the loss of this spirit threatens to undermine the democracy of our society.

Perhaps no American has seen the need to “put up with one another in love” more clearly than Martin Luther King, Jr. In a speech known as the “Birth of a New Age,” delivered in Buffalo, NY, on August 11, 1956, the evening after he had appeared at the Democratic National Convention, King called on people to rise up in protest to usher in a new age.[7] He urged them to meet several challenges. He began by saying: “we must rise above the narrow confines of our individualistic concerns, with a broader concern for all humanity … No individual can afford to live alone now.” He went on to argue: “We must live together, we are not independent, we are interdependent … Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly for we are tied together in a single progress. We are all linked in the great chain of humanity.” He had a vision of what he wanted to achieve: “The end is the creation of a beloved community. The end is the creation of a society where men will live together as brothers.” I suggest that King’s vision is an American version of the vision of Ephesians.

Hospitable Practice

Converting such a vision into reality does not happen by itself; it requires hard work, as both the author of Ephesians and King remind us. There are many ways in which this can and needs to be done. I have already mentioned one of the most challenging: candid conversations when we differ. Let me offer one more, one of the simplest but most important practices that all of you can do. We have routinely provided opportunities for you to eat together. While this is, on the one hand, to make sure that people do not go hungry, it is, on the other hand, an attempt to build community. It is why the refurbishing of the refectory was the first renovation project I undertook as dean. It is why we provide dining points for you to eat together. It is why we have community meals. It is why Andover Newton Seminary and Berkeley Divinity School offer community dinners once a week. And it is why we will celebrate your accomplishments with a meal today. There is something sacred about eating together: we build bonds with each other. I urge you to practice hospitality. It is one of the great ways that we build social capital. I confess that I was shocked when I learned that nearly 50 percent of Americans have stopped entertaining friends. I urge you to remember your meals together here and practice the same with others in your future.

I want to end with three stories about this year. During the first major snowstorm, which dumped approximately a foot of snow on the ground, the residents of the Living Village—the “Villagers” as they style themselves—pooled their resources in the Community Kitchen and prepared hot drinks and food for the workers who were shoveling the snow. No one asked them to do this; they did this entirely on their own because they saw a need and appreciated the efforts of the snow-removal workers.

More recently, Joyce Mercer, the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and Sarah Goleman-Mercer, Joyce’s daughter who is a student here, lost their son and brother in a tragic death. Andrew was a student at the University of Virginia. Joyce and Sarah learned about his death one recent evening. The next evening nearly 150 students, staff, and faculty gathered in Joyce’s backyard and held a vigil. No one who was there will forget the experience. It was, for me, our community at its best in an unimaginable situation. If you were there, hold that memory sacred.

Finally, I invited Yale’s Provost to speak in Marquand Chapel this year. I had heard him speak about values at Yale and asked him to say the same thing in our chapel. Afterwards, we had lunch in my office and then I gave him a tour of the Divinity School and Living Village. Several months later he remarked to me, “I noticed something special at the Divinity School as I participated in chapel, saw the students eat lunch, and walked by classrooms. I saw a sense of community that I have not seen elsewhere on campus.” Though he said this to me, it was spoken about all of you.

Centripetal Spirit

We are not a perfect community; we are a community of flawed human beings who struggle to live our ideals. But we have worked at it and have set forming a community as an ideal. I urge you to remember this ideal and commit yourself to building the community where you live. The centrifugal forces of our society pulling us apart are—at present—far greater than the centripetal forces that bring us together. We need people who will respect one another and work for the common good.

I leave you with a childhood memory. I am old enough to have watched the broadcast of JFK’s inauguration on January 20, 1961. He uttered one of the most famous lines in a presidential inaugural address: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”[8] May we all ask what we can do for one another. May we weave new threads into the tattered fabric that holds our society together. Our future as a society depends on it.

Gregory E. Sterling is The Reverend Henry L. Slack Dean and Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament at Yale Divinity School.