Class of 1996 Profile: Aaron Klink

As part of the celebration of the 15th anniversary of the YTI Class of 1996, YTI alumni are interviewing each other, discovering and recording what is happening in the lives of our YTI family today. If you are a member of the class of 1996, and would like to participate in this project, contact Sara Toering at sjtoering@gmail.com

Aaron is interviewed here by Rebecca Rich:

After finishing high school, Aaron went back to Atlanta and majored in political science and religion at Emory University. He then obtained a master of divinity degree at Yale Divinity School. There, Aaron worked with a team that evaluated pastoral care for cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy. The resulting report was so controversial that it ended up on CNN. After graduating from Yale, Aaron worked as a chaplain at Yale New Haven Hospital, then at a church in New York, before moving to Durham, North Carolina to do a Th.M. in Ethics at Duke. There, he focused on the relationship between faith and health care practices. Aaron stayed in Durham after finishing his Duke degree and worked with veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan as the inpatient psychiatric ward chaplain at the Veterans Hospital. Aaron now works as a hospice chaplain and is a member of Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church in Durham. While he has some frustrations with institutional Lutheranism, Aaron remains committed to the power and distinctive witness of Lutheran theology, especially in the American South.

Aaron reports that YTI impacted his life by making him aware of the links between religion and larger social questions. Indeed, those links have shaped all of his thinking and work since YTI. For example, Aaron is currently working on a book with his advisor from Duke on ways Christians deal with pain and illness from both a medical and theological perspective. Aaron is also working on a book with people at the Veterans Hospital in Durham about ways congregations can help veterans returning from war readjust to life.

Aaron can be reached at: aaron.klink@duke.edu