The treatment of black students at Duke University’s Divinity School has recently come into question in light of protests on the North Carolina campus, where black students are reportedly called the n-word and referred to by other racial slurs on a regular basis. Of the 631 students enrolled in the 2016-17 school year, 16 percent were black, 6 percent Asian, 4 percent Latino and 68 percent white. With a curriculum that lacks inclusion of black religious traditions, black students consistently receive lower grades than their white counterparts.

In an interview with NPR, third-year seminary student and president of the Black Seminarians Union Amber Burgin said, “I've had classmates who have had to take leave; I've had classmates who have left the program because they were tired of being treated in such a way." Burgin went on to describe an exchange she had with another black student in the program, “One of my classmates was sitting in a class, and she texted me and asked me to come to her class because a student was in her class saying, 'N*ggers like you come here and think that you can just change everything. Why don't you just learn what Jesus is really about?…We are in classes trying to pull each other out of class to hear people making inappropriate slurs, like a white student calling someone a jigaboo and then claiming they didn't know what that means. Or a white classmate calling a black classmate 'ghetto.’”

Although the school's website claims to have a commitment to diversity with an inclusive approach to theology to "foster more faithful, hopeful, and loving forms of common life," prominent minister and Duke Divinity alum Carl Kenny suggests that in recent years the program has failed to deliver on that promise. "As a local pastor here in Durham, I witnessed the development of students coming through the divinity school over the years that was positive and inspired me as an alum to be happy about the divinity school," he said. "What I witnessed over the past couple of years has been the steady decline of that type of presence."

Burgin, who received her master's degree in psychology from the historically-black university North Carolina Central, also said the school's atmosphere targets Latino and LGBTQ students. "People are blatantly allowed to question the humanity of LGBTQ students and no one does anything about it. This is a reflection of the church and the people of God's church. Why are we teaching in a space where we are not edifying all of God's people — or at least we say we are but then we're treating each other like this?"

It is well documented fact that black millennials are leaving the traditional black church in droves, not because they lack faith or religious principles, but because, generally speaking, their values tend to lean toward theology that engages their mind as well as their hearts. For those who seek a practical, inclusive, socially conscious form of engagement, the unwillingness to address or even acknowledge contemporary issues affecting the black community that is so often purveyed by conservative black pastors can be disheartening. Kenny implies that this 'look the other way' philosophy is largely rooted in the conservative white evangelical education that many black ministers receive in seminary. “We have a shift in the way theological education is being taught nationwide that reflects the impact of evangelical ideas, and how they’re being pushed upon the black church.” He fears that the bigger picture will continue to have dire consequences for the black church as a whole. “To me it's bigger than just racism on the campus; it's how it impacts the black church. When you look at seminaries across the country, the funding of those seminaries is coming from evangelical entities who are very conservative," he said.

These contradictions seem to leave students like Burgin with more questions than answers.