{"id":57124,"date":"2015-04-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-30T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/commencement-2015-student-speakers-global-experience-helps-him-preach-intercontinental-message-of-love-understanding\/"},"modified":"2015-04-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-04-30T00:00:00","slug":"commencement-2015-student-speakers-global-experience-helps-him-preach-intercontinental-message-of-love-understanding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2015\/04\/commencement-2015-student-speakers-global-experience-helps-him-preach-intercontinental-message-of-love-understanding\/","title":{"rendered":"Commencement 2015: Student speaker\u2019s global experience helps him preach intercontinental message of love, understanding"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tMatt Quainoo earns bachelor\u2019s degree in two years on way to seminary<\/b><\/p>\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 30, 2015 \u2014 Matt Quainoo is used to speaking in front of a crowd. In fact, his congregation has been growing for two years now, as he has helped create and cultivate a growing membership in Sankofa, a campus ministry at the 溏心vlog免费B站 that started with around a dozen members and now sometimes sees as many as 200 in attendance.<\/p>\n


\nBut Quainoo will address the largest crowd of his life when he steps before approximately 15,000 people \u2013 including roughly 3,000 graduating seniors \u2014 May 17 at the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Commencement Ceremony. He is the student speaker representing the class of 2015. <\/p>\n


\nThe 19-year-old resident of North Kingstown, R.I., is younger than most of his classmates and, though his college experience lasted just two years, it is as rich and diverse as the experience of many students who spent twice as long on campus.<\/p>\n


\nQuainoo began working toward his college degree before he arrived in Kingston, earning college credits by taking advanced placement courses in high school and summer classes before his official enrollment began in the fall of 2013. Quainoo worked relentlessly, taking online courses, Winter J-Term classes, summer classes and full course loads during the fall and spring semesters to earn his degree in just two years.<\/p>\n


\nAnd he wasn\u2019t just accumulating credits. Quainoo worked to get everything he could out of each class, experience and research project.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cIf you\u2019re motivated, if you\u2019re willing, the faculty here will push you like you\u2019re at Harvard,\u201d Quainoo said. \u201cAt the start of each course, I went up to my professors and asked, \u2018How can I earn an A? How can I get the most out of this class?\u2019 They pushed me. They singled me out and took a personal interest in empowering me intellectually.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nQuainoo majored in Africana studies and political science with an eye toward becoming a pastoral scholar like his father, Joseph Quainoo, a part-time faculty member in 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s College of Continuing Education, and his older brother, Tim. <\/p>\n


\nMatt will pursue his master\u2019s degree in theological studies, with an interdisciplinary concentration in religion and society at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, N.J.<\/p>\n


\nAs his brief time at 溏心vlog免费B站 comes to a close and he prepares to move to New Jersey, Quainoo is taking the opportunity to spend as much time as he can with his 13-year-old brother, John.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI\u2019m going to miss being able to see him do well in school and playing soccer with him,\u201d Quainoo said. \u201cSo this is really a time when he can feel the legacy of love and support that I have always had.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nWhile some students enter college unsure of what their career path may hold, Quainoo has been on the path to becoming a pastoral scholar for most of his life. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cI was 6 or 7 years old and my family had a tradition of praying on Christmas morning before we opened our presents,\u201d Quainoo said. \u201cI was frustrated, like why are we delaying the climax of Christmas, the most important thing, opening presents? When my parents explained the narrative of Christmas to me, and what it really means, it suddenly became real. It wasn\u2019t about me coming to the altar. It was about the experience of letting God alter me. That\u2019s when I knew I wanted to preach.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nAt 溏心vlog免费B站, Quainoo worked to share his intercontinental upbringing \u2014 his father is from Ghana and his mother, Vanessa, an associate professor of communication studies at 溏心vlog免费B站, is a native of Illinois \u2014 and to expand his own global experience. <\/p>\n


\nQuainoo took classes and completed a research project in his ancestral home of Ghana in West Africa, where he was also able to reconnect with family members to learn about how they view family life. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cThere was a group of us, all cousins ages 25 and younger, and we engaged in a lot of family introspection about where we come from and where we still have to go,\u201d Quainoo said. <\/p>\n


\nWhile in Ghana, Quainoo also spoke with African theologians to learn about their views on religion, and he later compared those views to a theologian he interviewed in Indiana. <\/p>\n


\nAll of these experiences have helped shape Quainoo\u2019s views not just on religion, but on how he lives his life. He dons traditional African garb, such as a dashiki, and wears it over a perfectly pressed Western button-down shirt with a bow tie, reflecting a bicultural fusion he considers central to his upbringing. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cI had a very early exposure to the ethnocentrism and homogeny of the Western world,\u201d Quainoo said. \u201cMy school was 99 percent white. I was told I talk white and \u2018You\u2019re an Oreo.\u2019 So I wear this dashiki as a way to undermine that ethnocentrism and help people understand that, in the vast mosaic of our people, there is unity in our diversity.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nUnity and inclusion are among the great themes and aspirations that guide Quainoo\u2019s pursuits. As the congregation at Sankofa grew during the past two years, Quainoo said they were careful not to attach the group to a denomination of Christianity. Quainoo\u2019s goal was to preach the values and lessons of Christianity, without being bound by traditional rules and formalities. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cIt\u2019s about relations, not regulations,\u201d Quainoo said. \u201cSankofa is really inclusive and open \u2014 it doesn\u2019t erect walls, it breaks down walls. If someone comes to us in need of salvation, why would I want to communicate in any way that, \u2018You\u2019re not invited here,\u2019 or \u2018You\u2019re not welcome here?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n


\nInstead, Quainoo has sought to bring more believers into the fold and to engage with those who disagree with him \u2014 whether on matters of religion, politics, race or other issues. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cI try to humbly engage, to inquisitively engage them,\u201d Quainoo said. \u201cI don\u2019t have all the answers, but I try to question them to open them up to their own assumptions, and I try to allow them to open me up to my own assumptions. It\u2019s critical for interfaith or political dialogue to be collaborative. I want to work with you.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nSimilarly, while he\u2019s open to questioning his own assumptions, Quainoo questioned whether he was the right person to speak for the Class of 2015. His own hectic class and extra-curricular schedule posed its own challenges for him and he did not intend to apply. But friends and professors spoke to him and convinced him his message of love would be a great message for the Class of 2015 to carry with them into the world.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cMy friends convinced me to speak on behalf of the class not to self-aggrandize, but to give a voice to those who think they do not have a voice because they are too young,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a very humbling opportunity and privilege that people see me as someone who can represent them.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cMy message is the idea that we need to engage in love,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you can defend love in the face of injustice, you can restore and affirm our humanity. You don\u2019t need a pulpit or a stage. Wherever you are, just be an agent of love and justice.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nPhoto by Nora Lewis<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matt Quainoo earns bachelor\u2019s degree in two years on way to seminary KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 30, 2015 \u2014 Matt Quainoo is used to speaking in front of a crowd. In fact, his congregation has been growing for two years now, as he has helped create and cultivate a growing membership in Sankofa, a campus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57126,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}