Washington Adventist University to Present Its 38th G. Arthur Keough Lectureship on September 23-24, 2016
Takoma Park, Md. (August 30, 2016) Author Reggie L. Williams will be the featured speaker at Washington Adventist University’s 38th G. Arthur Keough Lectureship on September 23-24, 2016. The event is free and open to the public, and it will be held on campus in the chapel at Richards Hall, which is located next to the Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church at the corner of Flower and Carroll Avenues.
Williams is author of “Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance” (Baylor University Press, 2014), a member of the International Dietrich Bonhoeffer Society, and a founding member of the Society for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Religion. He is also a professor of Christian Ethics at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois.
The first lecture, “Becoming Human: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theological Anthropology and White Supremacy’s World of Ideals,” will start at 7 p.m. on Friday, September 23. Williams will address Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s confrontation of Nazism and anti-Semitic racism in Hitler’s Germany. He will discuss how the Reich’s political ideology and the theology of the German Christian movement turned Jesus into a divine representation of the racially pure Aryan, allowing race-hate to become part of Germany’s religious life. Williams will also address how Bonhoeffer provided a Christian response to Nazi atrocities.
The second lecture, “Harlem Renaissance Theology: Interrogating the Problem of the Human as a Problem for Christian Ethics,” will be presented on Saturday, September 24 at 3:30 p.m. Williams will focus on the Christianity of the Harlem Renaissance, which featured a black Christ who suffered with African Americans in their struggle against injustice and racial violence. From the pews of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, under the leadership of Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., Bonhoeffer absorbed a theology that challenged the way God could be used to underwrite race and religion.
This Lectureship was organized by Mikhail Kulakov, D. Phil., professor of the Washington Adventist University Department of Religion and director of the WAU Bible Translation Institute.
More information about Reggie Williams can be found on his website.
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Washington Adventist University is Montgomery County’s only four-year private college. Part of the Seventh-day Adventist system of higher education, Washington Adventist University has been educating college students since 1904 on a 19-acre campus in suburban Takoma Park, close to the nation’s capital. Approximately 1,100 students of all faiths participate in the university’s eight graduate and 42 undergraduate programs. The 2016 edition of U.S. News & World Report ranked Washington Adventist University among the best regional colleges in the north.
Media Contacts:
Angie Crews, 301-891-4134, acrews@wau.edu
Donna Bigler, 240-286-1169, dbigler@wau.edu