Tom Lin, a Chicago native and former missionary to Mongolia, was named president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, the national ministry to 40,200 university students, based in Madison, Wisconsin. He is the first person of color in the role.
Most recently, he served as head of Urbana 15, InterVarsity’s missions conference, where leaders pledged support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Kathryn Tanner, professor of systematic theology at Yale Divinity School, gave the prestigious Gifford Lectures May 2–12 at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
The six-part series, “Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism,” explored cultural forms of finance-dominated capitalism and suggested how Christian beliefs and practices can counter these forms’ pervasive and often negative impact on human lives and communities.
Sadiq Khan, the son of a Pakistani-born bus driver, became the first Muslim mayor of London despite a campaign that included accusations of extremism.
Voters in the city of 8.5 million residents chose the Labour Party member in early May, potentially the first election of a Muslim to lead a Western European city. (Ahmed Aboutaleb was appointed mayor of Rotterdam in 2009.)
Manas Buthelezi, a Lutheran bishop in South Africa and one of the great African theologians of the 20th century, died April 20 at age 81.
Buthelezi, former vice president of the Lutheran World Federation, was also active with the World Council of Churches, the All Africa Conference of Churches, and the South African Council of Churches.
Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest and herald of the Catholic social justice movement, died April 30 at age 94.
Berrigan gained worldwide attention in May 1968 when he and his younger brother, Philip, who was a Josephite priest, along with seven other Catholics seized draft records from a Selective Service office in Catonsville, Maryland. The group doused the files with homemade napalm in a parking lot outside of the draft office and torched them while joining hands in prayer.