From Water and Ash: Restorying Baptism as Sacred Memory
OCTOBER 13, 2025
McCormick’s 2025 MTS–Public Spaces Distance Program Micro-Grant Recipient: Natasha L. Robinson, JD
McCormick Theological Seminary is proud to announce that Natasha L. Robinson, JD, has been awarded the 2025 Master of Theological Studies – Public Spaces Distance Program Micro-Grant for her innovative project, From Water & Ash: Baptism as Sacred Memory Ritual.
This grant honors emerging theologians whose prototypes for theological impact demonstrate both creativity and contextual depth. Robinson’s proposal embodies McCormick’s spirit of innovation and the Sacred Memory Project’s aim to “re-story”—a practice and methodology that reclaims erased, distorted, or silenced narratives and transforms them into sources of truth, healing, and power
RE-STORYING THE SACRED
At its heart, Robinson’s project seeks to reimagine baptism—not as a ritual of shame or purification from sin, but as an inclusive act of sacred remembrance rooted in African cosmologies and theologies of liberation.
Drawing on the Adinkra symbol Mmusuyidee, meaning “cleansing and renewal,” From Water & Ash reframes baptism as a communal act of spiritual alignment and restoration. Through curriculum, libation, liturgy, and technology, the project centers four tenets—belief, following, community, and love—to build a baptismal experience that uplifts and includes all God’s people.
Robinson, a member of The Gathering in Dallas, TX—founded by co-pastors Dr. Irie Lynne Session and Dr. Kamilah Hall Sharp—describes her work as a response to a powerful question echoing from Acts 8:36: “See, here is water. What prevents me from being baptized?”
For her, that question remains both theological and deeply personal. Her design challenges the ways baptism has historically been used to exclude, especially those who are queer, genderfluid, disabled, or deemed “unworthy” by oppressive interpretations of Scripture.
THE POWER OF RESTORYING
The grant committee was particularly moved by Robinson’s use of restorying as a coded competency—a sacred skill passed through generations of African and diasporic communities to resist erasure and reclaim truth.
Her approach aligns with the Sacred Memory Project’s vision: to use theological imagination as a tool for liberation. In From Water & Ash, water becomes both symbol and teacher—an element that cleanses, heals, and connects the community to divine memory.
Through this project, Robinson and her collaborators at The Gathering will develop a new baptismal curriculum, create inclusive rituals adaptable for virtual and in-person participation, and center sacred memory as a theological practice of collective healing.
WHY THIS MATTERS
In an era where faith is often fractured by exclusion and distortion, From Water & Ash invites us back to the essence of the sacred: belonging. It offers a vision of church that remembers, restores, and reclaims—where ritual becomes resistance and remembrance becomes renewal.
McCormick celebrates Natasha L. Robinson’s groundbreaking work and her embodiment of what it means to be a theological innovator for public good. Because in the words of the Sacred Memory cohort, “restorying isn’t just remembering—it’s reclaiming the power to heal.”