Gary Dorrien
Boston University School of Theology Community Center
Mark Jordan
Boston University School of Theology Community Center
Dr. Emilie M. Townes, an American Baptist clergywoman, is a native of Durham, North Carolina. She holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School and a Ph.D. in Religion in Society and Personality from Northwestern University. Dr. Townes is the Dean and Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, becoming the first African American to serve as Dean of the Divinity School in 2013. She is the former Andrew W. Mellon Professor of African American Religion and Theology at Yale University Divinity School and in the fall of 2005, she was the first African American woman elected to the presidential line of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and served as president in 2008. She was the first African American and first woman to serve as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the Yale Divinity School. She is the former Carolyn Williams Beaird Professor of Christian Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Social Ethics at Saint Paul School of Theology. Editor of two collection of essays, A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering and Embracing the Spirit: Womanist Perspectives on Hope, Salvation, and Transformation; she has also authored Womanist Ethics, Womanist Hope, In a Blaze of Glory: Womanist Spirituality as Social Witness, Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African American Health Issues and a Womanist Ethic of Care, and her groundbreaking book, Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil. She is co-editor with Stephanie Y. Mitchem of the Faith, Health, and Healing in African American Life. Her most recent co-editorship is Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader done with Katie Geneva Cannon and Angela Sims was published in November 2011. She continues her research on women and health in the African diaspora in Brasil and the United States. Townes was elected a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. She served a four-year term as president of the Society for the Study of Black Religion from 2012 to 2016.
Boston University Photonics Colloquium Room
The Rev. Traci Blackmon is the Executive Minister of Justice & Witness Ministries of The United Church of Christ and Senior Pastor of Christ The King United Church of Christ in Florissant, MO. As pastor, Rev. Blackmon leads Christ The King in an expanded understanding of church as a sacred launching pad of community engagement and change. This ethos has led to a tripling of both membership and worship attendance over the last seven years, expanding membership engagement opportunities, and the establishment of community outreach programs. Community programming includes a computer lab, tutoring, continuing education classes, summer programming, a robotics team, children's library, and girls' mentoring program. All housed in the church. Regionally, Rev. Blackmon's signature initiatives have included Healthy Mind, Body, and Spirit, a mobile faith-based outreach program she designed to impact health outcomes in impoverished areas. Sacred Conversations on Solomon’s Porch, quarterly clergy in-services designed to equip local clergy to assess physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health concerns within congregational life. Sista SOS Summit, an intergenerational health symposium for women and girls. In addition to, Souls to the Polls STL, an ecumenical, multi-faith collaborative that was successful in providing over 2,800 additional rides to the polls during local and national elections. A featured voice with many regional, national, and international media outlets and a frequent contributor to print publications, Rev. Blackmon's communal leadership and work in the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown, Jr., in Ferguson, MO, has gained her both national and international recognition and audiences from the White House to the Carter Center to the Vatican. She was appointed to the Ferguson Commission by Governor Jay Nixon and to the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships for the White House by President Barack H. Obama. Rev. Blackmon toured the nation with Rev. Dr. William Barber of Moral Mondays and Repairer of the Breech, Rev. Dr. James Forbes of The Drum Major Institute and Pastor Emeritus of The Riverside Church in New York, and Sister Simone Campbell of Nuns on the Bus, proclaiming the need for a Moral Revival in this nation.
Boston University School of Theology Community Center
Martin Doblmeier
Boston University -- Photonics 206
Karen P. Oliveto was consecrated as a bishop of The United Methodist Church on July 16, 2016 in Scottsdale, Ariz., and assigned for the 2016-2020 quadrennium to the Mountain Sky Episcopal Area, which includes the Rocky Mountain, and Yellowstone annual (regional) conferences. It includes 400 congregations in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and a small section of Idaho. Bishop Oliveto was elected to the episcopacy after serving as the first woman pastor of the 12,000-member Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco, Calif. She is the first woman to serve as senior pastor of one of The United Methodist Church’s 100 largest congregations. She served Glide from 2008 until her election as bishop. She and her wife, Robin Ridenour, a nurse anesthetist and United Methodist deaconess, were married in 2014.
Boston University School of Theology Community Center
Dianne Glave, Coordinator of Diversity Development with the Western Pennsylvania United Methodist Church Conference Center, will begin the discussion and Rev. Dr. Kapya John Kaoma (STH '10) will be her discussion partner. Dianne Glave completed her M.Div. at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. After completing her degree, she served as a local pastor at Crafton United Methodist Church and Ingomar Church in the Western Pennsylvania United Methodist Church Conference Center (WPAUMC). Rev. Glave recently joined the staff of the WPAUMC as the Coordinator of Diversity Development. Dr. Glave's background, an M.A. and Ph.D. in History with an emphasis on African American and environmental history and experience as a professor in African American Studies and Ethnic Studies, serves as a foundation for her current position. Her publications include Rooted in the Earth: Reclaiming the African American Environmental Heritage and To Love the Wind and the Rain: African American Environmental History, a co-edited volume with Mark Stoll. Kapya John Kaoma (STH '10) is a scholar, pastor, and activist for international human rights.
Boston University School of Theology Community Center
Dai Sil Kim-Gibson and Hee-Soo Jung
Boston University Sherman Union Auditorium
Don Messer, William Bobby McClain, and Pamela Lightsey
Boston University School of Theology Community Center
Cornell William Brooks, President and CEO of the NAACP
Boston University Marsh Chapel
For the latest information regarding each event please contact the presenting organization.