Practicing What We Preach from the Pulpit to the Public Square

3100 Richard Allen Court,Denver CO 80205

18 November, 2022

Description

The Black Religious Scholars Group Twenty-Fourth Annual ConsultationMaking It Plain: Practicing What We Preach from the Pulpit to the Public SquareHonoring Rev. Dr. Valerie Bridgeman and Rev. Dr. Forrest E. Harris Sr. Friday, November 18, 20227:00–10:00 p.m.The overall theme for this year’s gathering is entitled “Making It Plain: Practicing What We Preach from the Pulpit to the Public Square.” Ever since the many traumatic and transformative events that have befallen the United States and the world at large, we—much like countless other organizations and institutions—had to find ways to adapt and cope with the “new normal” through the long, daunting shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic. The BRSG has taken this moment as an opportunity to return to our in-person consultation model after confronting the steep challenges of our time. Per our custom, the BRSG’s executive committee has devised a wonderful program in which the speakers and topics engaged the broader scope of community uniting toward solutions to benefit one and all. For many of us who have been battered by the whirlwind of a bitterly broken and painfully polarized nation still reeling from the aftermath of the past two years, we have all been grappling with the combined burden of the coronavirus pandemic, massive global #BlackLivesMatter protests leading to a “summer of racial reckoning,” false claims by conservatives casting aspersions on the validity as well as veracity of the 2020 presidential elections leading to the Jan. 6th, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and ongoing right-wing efforts to attack everything from voting rights, reproductive rights, workers’ rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and other longstanding rights and freedoms. This year’s BRSG consultation will focus on how Black religious leaders, scholars, and activists seek to encourage our faith communities to recover the resources from our past in order to rescue our present and redeem our future. As various peoples across both the nation and the world are enduring immense horrors, hardships, and heartaches because of the current political and cultural climate in the United States, peoples of African descent are especially attuned to such pernicious, persistent oppression as a facet of one's daily existence. HonoreesRev. Dr. Valerie Bridgeman | Dean & Vice President of Academic Affairs and Associate Professor, Homiletics and Hebrew Bible at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio Rev. Dr. Forrest E. Harris Sr. | Professor of the Practice of Ministry and Director of the Kelly Miller Smith Institute on Black Church Studies, Vanderbilt Divinity School and President, American Baptist College Council of GriotsRev. Dr. Teresa Fry Brown, moderator | Bandy Professor of Preaching of the Candler School of Theology at Emory University Rev. Dr. Renita Weems | Internationally renowned preacher, biblical scholar, and womanist theologian Rev. Dr. Stephen G. Ray Jr. | 2022-2023 Crump Visiting Professor and Black Religious Scholars Group Scholar-in-Residence, Seminary of the Southwest Rev. Dr. Teresa Smallwood, J.D. | James Franklin Kelly and Hope Eyster Kelly Associate Professor of Public Theology, United Lutheran Seminary Location Shorter Community AME Church 3100 Richard Allen Court Denver, CO 80205 Transportation Pickup LocationRoundtrip ground transportation will be provided for registered participants. The buses will depart at 6:00 p.m. from the Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center. The buses will return to the Hyatt Regency Denver after the consultation. Rev. Dr. Valerie Bridgeman is Dean and Vice President of Academic Affairs, as well as Associate Professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible at Methodist Theological School of Ohio. She also is founding president and CEO of WomanPreach! Inc. —the premiere non-profit organization that brings preachers to full prophetic voice. Dr. Bridgeman has been in licensed or ordained ministry since 1977. Some of her publications include “Interpreting the Bible in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter: The Gideon Story and Scholarly Commitments,” in Second Wave Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible, published in 2019; “’A Long Ways from Home’: Displacement, Lament, and Singing Protest in Psalm 137,” in Perspectives in Religious Studies, 2017; and “‘I Will Make Boys Their Princes’: A Womanist Reading of Children in the Book of Isaiah,” 311-327, in Womanist Interpretations of the Bible: Expanding the Discourse, 2016. She is a regular contributor to workingpreacher.org and writes regularly for the Journal for Preachers. She currently is completing a commentary on Hosea with Dr. Cheryl Kirk-Duggan and will write the commentary on Job, both in the Wisdom Commentary series. She also is co-editor of a volume on Womanist methodologies, with Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder. Dr. Bridgeman is a graduate of Baylor University, with a Ph.D. in biblical studies (Hebrew Bible concentration) and secondary studies in ethics. She received her Master of Divinity from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, who named her Distinguish Alumna in 2018. She received her BA in Communication and Religion from Trinity University (San Antonio). She is a peace activist and advocate for human rights. Rev. Dr. Forrest E. Harris Sr. was appointed President of American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee in 1999. He is the Director of the Kelly Miller Smith Institute on Black Church Studies that has a 1.2 million dollar endowment for the perpetuation of theological study and dialogue in African American congregations, and Assistant Dean for Black Church Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School. Dr. Harris holds a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree from Knoxville College, a Bachelor of Theology (Th.B.) degree from American Baptist College, Master of Divinity (M.Div.) and Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) degrees from Vanderbilt University Divinity School. Dr. Harris has published three books: What Does It Mean To Be Black and Christian: The Pulpit, Pew and the Academy in Dialogue (Townsend Press); and Ministry for Social Crisis: Theology and Praxis in the Black Church Tradition (Mercer University Press), and What Does It Mean To Be Black and Christian: The Meaning of the African American Church.