CDSP graduated 41 seminary students during the Eucharist held at the Episcopal Church-affiliated school in Berkeley, California.

"The Spirit is looking around for people to build anew…to build buildings with open doors and a vast welcome…where lives can be built anew, the lives of individuals and the lives of communities," said Countryman.

"The Spirit wants us to cross the seemingly eternal divides between rich and poor, between different ethnicities, between men and women, between gay and straight, between red state and blue state, between evangelical and liberal and catholic, between those who are already believers and those who think they would never care to be a part of us."

Turning to the graduating class, Countryman advised that "the Spirit is perfectly willing to send out the raw recruits to do the dirty work."

"Don't wait for someone to hand you a hammer. You already have it. Discover it. Use it…for the building of new life and hope." 

Countryman is professor emeritus of Biblical Studies at CDSP. He writes and speaks on a wide variety of topics, ranging from the Bible to gay and lesbian spirituality. He is perhaps best known for "Dirt, Greed, and Sex, a study of sexual ethics in the New Testament and today" (recently reissued in a revised edition), and for "Living on the Border of the Holy," which explores the nature of priesthood, lay and ordained. He has recently published "Interpreting the Truth: Changing the Paradigm of Biblical Studies."

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees were granted to Matthew Kenyon Chew, former member of the CDSP Board of Trustees, and former trustee of the Church Pension Fund; Georgene Treadwell Keeler, former chair of the CDSP Board of Trustees; and Sharon-Gay Smith, Consortial Registrar of the Graduate Theological Union (GTU).

CDSP honored Smith for her more than 37 years of service to the GTU, including the past 19 as the common registrar for the consortium. In addition to maintaining the regular registration rhythms of producing course schedules, processing registrations, facilitating grade collection and distribution, and academic record maintenance, she increased efficiency in many of the GTU's data systems. Throughout her tenure, Smith, a member of the Episcopal Diocese of California, retained her love of the students, faculty and staff of all the GTU schools.

Chew was honored for his many years of fiscal leadership on behalf of CDSP, and for his involvement in the Church at both the diocesan and denominational levels. He served the Diocese of Arizona on numerous commissions and committees, among which are the Standing Committee, the Commission on Ministry, and search committees for two bishops. As Chair of the Legislative Committee on Consent to the Election of Bishops at the 75th General Convention, Chew had the historic honor of announcing to the House of Deputies the election of the first female Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, a member of CDSP's classes of 1994 and 2001. Chew served CDSP as a trustee from 1982-93, and continues to serve the seminary as a member of its Phoenix Council.

Keeler has worked as a financial advisor and portfolio manager, specializing in socially responsible investing, for the past 25 years. Keeler is currently in her second term on the Commission on Ministry in the Diocese of California. She has long been a significant presence at CDSP, chairing its Business of God luncheons, and has served on the advisory, management and finance, planned giving and endowment committees. She served on the CDSP Board of Trustees beginning in 1996, and as chair from 1999 until her retirement in 2006. She was the first woman to lead the CDSP board.

California Bishop Marc Andrus, the bishop presiding at the commencement, carried a crozier that belonged to William Ford Nichols (1890-1924), the founding bishop of CDSP.