 | The Reverend John W. Kinney |
In conjunction with the celebration of February as Black History Month, the Yale Divinity School (YDS) will host a lecture honoring two noted figures in the civil rights movement and launch a series exploring the black presence at YDS.
The Reverend John W. Kinney, a noted theologian and historian at historically black Virginia Union University, will present the annual Parks-King Lecture at 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 15, in Marquand Chapel, 409 Prospect St. A reception in the Day Missions Library will follow the talk, which is free and open to the public.
Established at YDS in 1983, the Parks-King Lecture commemorates the contributions of Rosa Parks, whose arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white rider helped spark the civil rights movement, and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., who helped lead that campaign for justice. The goal of the annual lecture is to highlight the contributions of African-American scholars, social theorists, pastors and social activists.
Kinney, who is dean and professor of theology and historical studies at Virginia Union's Samuel Dewitt Proctor School of Theology, will examine the restoration of community, the convergence of head and heart, and the church and the academy in the context of the Parks-King legacy and current global realities.
The lecture will be preceded by the first in a series of forums that will be presented in the next 18 months exploring the history of black theological education at Yale.
The Feb. 15 forum, titled "Forging the Dream: Remembering YDS in the Pre-Civil Rights Era," will feature a panel of African-American YDS alumni from the 1940s and 1950s, who will examine the pedagogy of gender and racial inclusion at YDS.
Participants will include Richard I. McKinney '42 Ph.D., former president of Storer College; the Reverend Rena Weller Karefa-Smart '45 B.D., the first black woman graduate of YDS, an Episcopal priest who is a proponent of global ecumenism and former professor of Christian Ethics at Howard University School of Religion; the Reverend Samuel Slie '52 B.D., '63 S.T.M., associate pastor of the Church of Christ at Yale; and Bernice Cosey Pulley '55 B.D., World YWCA representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council and social justice activist.
The forum will take place noon-1:30 p.m. in the Divinity School common room. It is free and open to the public. Those attending may bring lunch; beverages and desserts will be provided. A book signing will immediately follow the luncheon.
Future forums in the YDS series will focus on themes such as the school and the wider New Haven community; black women and the YDS experience; and black alumni and their impact throughout the world. It will conclude with a conference featuring black YDS alumni who are contributing to contemporary black theological education in the church and the academy.
The forums are part of a research project titled "'Been in the Storm So Long': Yale Divinity School and the Black Ministry -- One Hundred and Fifty Years of Black Theological Education." The project is focusing on the history of theological education for blacks in America, with particular attention to the experience of blacks at YDS and the impact that theological education at Yale had on the lives and careers of myriad alumni, church and community leaders. The study will also examine the effectiveness of strategies employed in the theological education of blacks in order to develop new paradigms for the field.
Principal investigators of this collaborative project are the Reverend Yolanda Y. Smith, assistant professor of Christian education at YDS, and Moses N. Moore Jr. '77 M.Div., associate professor of American and African American religious history at Arizona State University. Smith is an expert in Christian pedagogy and has experience in gathering oral histories and preservation techniques. Moore's expertise is archival research.
T H I S
Events explore black theological
education, Parks-King legacy
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