Berkeley Celebrates Black History Month

February 13, 2020

Each year during the second semester Berkeley Divinity School offers the Wesley-Royce Leadership Colloquium, a weekly speaker series featuring church and lay leaders who share their thoughts on the skills and perspectives needed for effective church leadership. This February Berkeley’s focus on Race and the Church features three outstanding speakers.          

On Feb. 3, the Very Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, author of Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God and Dean and President of the Episcopal Divinity School-Union Theological Seminary in New York, discussed race, social justice and the Church in the current political climate. After Colloquium, Douglas joined Berkeley students and Yale Black Seminarians for evening prayer in Marquand followed by dinner in the YDS Common Room. The following day, Douglas addressed the entire YDS community in the annual Parks-King Lecture.

On Feb. 10, Colloquium featured Lynn Sullivan, YDS Director of Community Equity. Sullivan’s topic was “Colorblind versus Color Conscious, Bias and Leadership: A Paradigm Shift.”  Sullivan joined the YDS staff this past summer after twenty years as a senior administrative leader in five independent schools.

 

The final speaker in the 2020 Colloquium series on Race and the Church is the Rev. Rowena Kemp, priest-in-charge of Grace Episcopal Church in Hartford, CT.  A Berkeley alumna (2013) and past trustee, Kemp will share her research on the role of race and slavery, both in the Episcopal Church and at Berkeley. Rowena will speak on Monday, February 17th at 4:00 p.m. in Niebuhr Hall.