A degree of divinity Commencement speaker tells graduates of Bangor Theological Seminary what congregations will really want to know

Clad in a black academic robe, Linda Anne Hatch stood in the center aisle of First United Methodist Church in Bangor on Friday, gently cradling a bouquet of flowers.

In one hand she clutched a gift bag, in the other, a diploma that declared her a master of divinity.

Hatch, 58, of Corinth was one of 16 students who graduated from Bangor Theological Seminary at its 186th commencement ceremony.

Attended by more than 250 people, Friday’s ceremony was moved from the seminary’s Hammond Street campus to the church on Essex Street because the seminary grounds were too wet for the ceremony to be held outside.

Friday’s ceremony was expected to be the last graduation held on the historic campus before the seminary’s planned move this summer across town to the Husson College campus.

The graduates, including Hatch, their families and friends, didn’t appear to be upset by the change in location.

After working as a teacher, homemaker and caregiver, Hatch began taking classes at the seminary more than four years ago. She had not been a student for 30 years, she said after the ceremony in which she was awarded a master of divinity degree.

“I was just called to pursue the love of God in my life and I’m going wherever he sends me,” said Hatch, who is serving as the interim pastor at Springfield United Church of Christ.

Bishop Peter D. Weaver, head of the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church, urged graduates not to take the words printed on their diplomas too seriously.

“When most of you receive your diplomas,” he said, “you will open it up and you will see in bold letters ‘Master of Divinity.’ Now that is not only presumptuous, that is preposterous. … What your congregation and what the world really wants to know is: Have you been mastered by divinity?”

Alumni who participated in the commencement ceremony included the Rev. David Sivret, who earned his master of divinity degree in 1998. Sivret, 49, of Calais is the rector of Episcopal churches in Calais and Eastport, but is on active duty as a chaplain with the Maine Army National Guard’s 133rd Engineer Battalion.

He returned to Maine in March after serving more than a year in Iraq. Sivret said after the ceremony Friday that he continues to receive medical treatment for injuries to his knee and ear he suffered in December when a mess tent at Camp Marez in Mosul was bombed while he and others were eating lunch.

The chaplain said that attending his alma mater’s graduation felt like “part of coming home.”