Amherst College’s Director of Religious Life, Rev. Paul Sorrentino has edited a new book called “A Transforming Vision: Multiethnic Fellowship in College and in the Church,” and the Frost Library will host a reading and discussion of the book Tuesday, April 12 at 4 p.m. with Sorrentino and one of the book’s contributors, Rev. Tim Jones, pastor of the First Central Baptist Church in Chicopee.

According to a press release, “A Transforming Vision” is about the importance to Christian communities in being made up of people from different ethnicities, and also discusses how the communities could accomplish this diversity. Doorlight Publications, the book’s publisher, wrote on the website that “the contributing authors worked together in an intentional multiethnic fellowship at Amherst College, and each of them was transformed by the experience.”

Eddy Ekmekji, a pastor with the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at the California State University at Northridge, reviewed “A Transforming Vision” favorably on his blog, “Serving Bread.” He wrote “The book offers a concrete vision of how the campus ministry at Amherst College grew in its conviction for multiethnicity and how they went about achieving this vision … authentic multiethnicity requires structural changes.”

“I have been a part of a couple of communities who boast multiethnicity as a core value, yet have failed to address the structures that do not make space for a multiethnic vision,” continued Ekmekji. “This community looked at how it does worship and created new structures to create space for people to honestly talk about being a multiethnic community.”

On his staff page for the Amherst College website, Sorrentino wrote, “As director of religious life, my commitment is to support people of all faiths and beliefs and to help them to find communities, be they on or off campus, where they can be spiritually nurtured within their own tradition. I believe that we respond best to religious plurality by encouraging the full expression of different faiths.”

Sorrentino has been director of religious life for 11 years, has advised the Amherst Christian Fellowship for 19 years and has been in campus ministry for 29 years. He holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of Chicago, a Master of Divinity from Bethel Seminary of the East and a Doctor of Divinity from the Princeton Theological Seminary.

Jones is a native of Richmond, Va. and graduated from Amherst College in 2004 with a degree in psychology. He got his M.Div from the Boston University School of Theology in 2009.

Matthew M. Robare can be reached at [email protected].