Health concerns prevent Lambert from attending commencement activities on Saturday on the North Park University campus, where honorary degrees are normally bestowed.
Faculty members participating in the presentation ceremony (accompanying photo) were Phil Anderson (lower left), professor of church history; Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom (top right), assistant professor of theology and ethics; Richard Carlson, professor of ministry; and Mary Miller, director of the Making Connections Initiative. Several family members and friends also attended the two-hour ceremony and social time that followed.
Lambert was unable to speak, but was fully alert during the event. “She was very much participating and enjoying it,” Anderson said. “Jean has been a strong and extremely determined person.”
The NPTS faculty voted to present her with the doctorate for her life of service to the church and academy in the United States and overseas, Anderson said. Although Lambert will not attend Saturday’s commencement, she will be recognized and honored during the ceremony.
The denomination previously recognized her service to urban and ethnic ministries when she was presented with the Irving C. Lambert Award during the 2006 Annual Meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The award is named for her father.
Lambert taught seminary level classes in the United States and Zimbabwe. She also served as pastor of Bethesda Covenant Church in New York City from 1984 to 1988 and as pastor of the English-speaking congregation at Immanuelskyrkan in Stockholm, Sweden. A third of that congregation was from Uganda.
She was one of the first women to be ordained in the Covenant, the first to serve on the Board of the Ordered Ministry, and one of the denomination’s first female theologians, Anderson noted.
Lambert earned a bachelor’s degree in history at North Park College (now university), a Master of Arts in Theology at Union Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion at Union Columbia University.
