Black Public Theology and Race in America
On Friday, October 12 and Saturday, October 13, 2018, Fuller Seminary’s William E. Pannell Center for African American Church Studies will host a public symposium on “Black Public Theology and Race in America”. Taking place on Fuller’s campus, this two-day event will engage black scholars and black church practitioners. The symposium seeks to bring the black academy and the black church into dialogue to explore ways to distill black theology and make it accessible to the black church and community.
Evening sessions of this event are free and open to the public. The day-time sessions are open to the public but tickets must be purchased online (discounts available for Fuller students, alumni, faculty, and staff). Visit the registration page to purchase tickets and to view the full symposium schedule.
ABOUT THE SYMPOSIUM
Black theology’s influence in the university and seminary in providing a hermeneutic that aids in understanding the Christian faith through the lens of the black experience is well attested. James Cone, Cornel West, Robert Franklin, Jacqueline Grant, Cheryl Sanders, and Katie Cannon are but a few advocates, popularizers, and proponents of this interpretive method.
Unfortunately, black theology remains largely an alien intellectual avocation to most black leaders and the black church. Its influence in the black church and the black community in an era of Black Lives Matter, is at best negligible. The symposium seeks to bring the black academy and the black church together in a dialogic conversation that will explore ways to distill black theology and make it accessible to the black church and community.
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ABOUT THE PANNELL CENTER
The William E. Pannell Center for African American Church Studies seeks to expand the formation of today’s Christian leaders, deepening their understanding of and engagement with the African American church and its contributions to society. Through academic, practical, and spiritual formation opportunities, the center nurtures relationships between the broader church, the Fuller community, and the African American church, community, and culture.
The Pannell Center was birthed in 1974—initially called the Theological Studies Program for Black Ministers—largely through the efforts of former trustee and longtime faculty member William E. Pannell, in whose honor the center was named in 2015. Its founding stemmed from a conviction that the Black church has much to contribute to the seminary experience, a conviction that continues to guide its work today.