Jen Bailey, MDiv’14: Keep the Faith

For Jen Bailey, Vanderbilt Divinity School’s student lounges and reading rooms were as important as the school’s classrooms were in shaping Faith Matters Network, the organization she founded and led for a decade. Observing how depleted and exhausted her classmates were from “doing deep theological reflection about the state of the world” and leading protests and nonprofits, Bailey began thinking about helping changemakers learn to care for themselves so they could continue to be effective in their work.

Faith Matters Network is perhaps best known as one of the co-founding organizations of The People’s Supper, gatherings where people “build trust across lines of difference”—political, ideological, social, racial, generational, socioeconomic and religious—by sharing a meal, discovering commonalities and working through differences.

“I could see the seeds of the work we do already sprouting in my time at VDS,” she says.

The Illinois native sensed a calling to the ministry at age 16, which she initially resisted, instead earning a degree in political science from Tufts University. A pivotal moment came in 2010 when a friend’s HIV/AIDS diagnosis deepened her understanding of being present with the pain in the world. Bailey was working at a nonprofit at the time and thought of pursuing a graduate degree in public policy.

Her childhood youth pastor urged her to consider divinity school instead, suggesting she could accomplish the same goals at half the cost. “I wanted to travel, I wanted to study policy … and I was able to do that with classes that intersected with [Owen] and other places across campus,” Bailey says. She was familiar with Nashville and knew people “who were doing really beautiful community organizing inspired from the deepest wells of their faith, and it seemed like all of them had a degree from VDS.”

Emilie M. Townes also encouraged her to choose Vanderbilt Divinity School, and later Bailey was delighted when Townes joined the school herself as dean. Stacey Floyd-Thomas, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Ethics and Society, played a key role in Bailey’s development, introducing her to “womanism,” a concept of feminism based around the experiences of Black women. Bailey found this particularly meaningful, providing her a language to describe her experiences in the Black church and making her feel truly seen and validated.

Bailey was active in community work during her time at the divinity school, signing up people in homeless camps for public benefits and working in soup kitchens. “I knew early on in my vocational discernment that the primary side of my ministry would not be the congregation but elsewhere in the world,” Bailey says.

Bailey started a new chapter in February as executive director of the Dan and Margaret Maddox Fund, an organization that supports projects concerning youth and the environment.

“I take very seriously VDS’ motto Schola Prophetarum so that we are indeed called to be the school of the prophets that attends to the deepest wounds in the world and do not avert our eyes, but use our faith as a motivation to repair that which we see broken.”

— MiChelle Jones