Date: March 27, 2026
Time: 9AM-5PM CT
Location: Main 205 and Online

Registration closes on March 23. Lunch will be provided to in person participants. Participation is free for the Garrett community. Talking about race and racial discrimination can be hard, but it’s important to understand how to fix these ongoing social issues. When we talk about belonging and diversity as strengths for communities and organizations, we must also recognize the challenges preventing these goals. Understanding antiracism and what it requires from leaders is key to creating diverse, fair, and welcoming places. This workshop aims to give participants a foundation of these concepts and practices to facilitate deeper, future learning.

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Dr. Walter Fluker (GETS ’80) prepares to offer the 2^nd Annual Cone/Townes Lecture 

“Who will be the leaders for this next generation? How do we refashion theological and ethical discourse for this moment?” Dr. Walter Fluker’s tone is grave as he reflects on the cascading crises that afflict God’s people, yet a fierce hope burns behind his eyes. This balance persists throughout our conversation—a towering scholar’s cleareyed assessment wed to Christian conviction that love will have the final word. As Dr. Fluker prepares to offer a call to “Wake Up Running,” on February 13, he links the present task facing religious leaders to the sweeping arc of American history and how Black communities have modeled different forms of ethical response to state violence. “In African American history and culture, there have been two interrelated but mostly independent variables around how we exist in the United States of America,” he reflects. “Do we pursue integration and become part of the moral reform of democratic processes, or do we follow Black nationalism or some form of Pan Africanism. I will trace the work of Drs. Cone and Townes, how they nurture these two competing traditions (with Townes’ treatment being more complicated by ‘triple oppression of race, class, and gender’), yet both tend to be closer to the former while maintaining an extended diasporic vision.” 

To provide historical context for the lecture, Dr. Fluker returns to enslaved people’s own faithful actions. “I draw upon an under-researched area of religious scholarship: the work of runaways and maroons,” he says. “Runaways fled the master’s farmhouse, folks like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. Maroons, however, stayed away and built communities away from the master. Borderland maroons lived closer to the farmhouse so they could make quick runs and visit kindred and appropriate the master’s food and supplies, while hinterland maroons moved farther away—they never planned on coming back. These two traditions are embryonic practices that find apotheosis in the institutions and traditions that I have named.” Across this spectrum, Dr. Fluker sees a roadmap for contemporary ethical response as leaders discern the best ways to serve their people. “How can we allow the Spirit of the living God to breathe in us in such a way that a new Pentecost breaks loose and creates new democratic spaces?” he asks. “Because if we use the same old stuff, we’ll only remain in the same ideological traps that hold us now in neoliberal captivity.” 

It’s an enormous task, so he hopes Dr. James H. Cone and Dr. Emily M. Townes can guide students through this wilderness to diagnose what’s killing God’s people and chart a path toward new life and ways of being together. “In The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Dr. Cone rightly says that unless we take seriously the re-crucified body that died on these lynching trees as a new symbol for understanding the cross, then we have missed the whole point of U.S. history and what it means to be a Christian” he notes. “It’s crucial that we understand this cross without rushing to some great cataclysmic resurrection or in-breaking eschatological event.” To sit in pain without hastening to paper over violence demands deep spiritual grounding, however, and he believes Dr. Townes’ ethical analysis provides necessary tools. “Love is central for Dr. Townes when she talks about justice,” he observes. “She calls us to congregating, conjuring and conspiring in an incredibly powerful way—and presents the possibility to build spaces that allow for people to act justly and do mercy, even when surrounded by unjust and unmerciful systems.” 

At their best, churches can incubate these types of revolutionary spaces. “I take looking, listening, and learning very seriously,” Dr. Fluker says. “Churches can engage in ethical leadership training, learning that we are responsible not only for our actions, but for our reactions as well. This is an expression of transformative civility that’s essential for collective life.” At the same time, this will require a nimbleness in ecclesial bodies, and a new generation of leaders who can wake up running. “Churches that carry heavy weights of dogma and doctrine are not going to be able to make the run,” he laughs. “We can’t let ecclesiastical baggage hold us back or allow churches to become small echo chambers where I’m talking and you’re talking but we’re not hearing each other.” If we can transcend these stumbling blocks, however, local parishes hold the potential to cultivate lifesaving faith that spreads as leaven into the larger society. 

It’s a lesson Dr. Fluker draws from his own experience at Garrett. “I did my undergrad at Trinity College, a white evangelical school, that created dilemmas and conflicts that I was unable to resolve as an African American” he recalls. “Garrett was a site of salvation and community for me.” While a student, he became deeply engaged in local parish life—a practice he has continued throughout his scholarly life, serving at the behest of the pastor in the faith communities he calls home. He also began to explore Howard Thurman’s work, the start of a decades-long academic journey with the theologian whom he believes can offer a spiritual model for ministry on the move. “I’m speaking to these contemporary maroons and runaways and asking, “What’s in their runaway bags?” he says. “Escaped enslaved Africans always carried a “go bag” and a blanket so they could survive in the swamps. I’m interested in what this new generation of faith leaders will carry in their bags.” More than a call for material provisions, Dr. Fluker hopes to offer spiritual resources students can bring. “For Howard Thurman, the initial need is to cultivate a sense of presence—an interior space where we encounter knowledge of self and a sense of calling,” he notes. “From there we cultivate spiritual disciplines like freedom and common consciousness.” 

It’s a provocative tension—the pull between ministry that must be responsive to communities’ shifting needs and the need to stay grounded within. Dr. Fluker likens this dynamic to the difference between a circle and a spiral. The circle has long been a geometric representation of healthy community, but Fluker suggests it is an insufficient model for the communities we must birth. “We have to liberate the circle,” Dr. Fluker conjectures. “For those of us on a spiritual journey, we must reimagine the circle as a spiral, a continuous quest toward a deeper center.” Spirals also continually bring the margins to the center that simultaneously become margins—a focal task for liberation theologies.  

Ultimately, Dr. Fluker yearns to fuel attendees’ faith at a moment when headlines proclaim desolation. “We’re at crossing(s)” he notes. “Crossing(s) in traditional African belief are very tricky places. They promise peril, but they also carry great potential for revelation. How do we work at these crossing(s) without being crucified?” Engaged faith allows leaders to reject a seductive nihilism, or cynicism that masquerades as sophisticated analysis and intellectual pomposity. “I live in hope,” Dr. Fluker concludes. “If I cannot find it within myself, how in the world can I be authentic and speak about hope with others?”

If we can navigate these crossing(s), victory will be marked and measured by how leadership nurtures a just and compassionate life. In closing, Dr. Fluker offers an example from Thurman’s own ministry. “Very early in my research, I interviewed some of the people whom he served at Fellowship Church and boy, did they love Howard Thurman! I asked one woman, ‘How did Thurman make you feel?’” he recalls with a smile. “I had to stop the recording as she just cried and cried. Suddenly, after a long while, she looked up and said, ‘He made me feel that I had worth.’ What I’ll be asking folks at the lecture is, ‘How do we get to that place and how does knowing and living out of the space help us all to wake up running?’” 

Dr. Walter Fluker will deliver the 2^nd Annual Cone/Townes Lecture on Thursday, February 13, 4:00 p.m. CT at Garrett’s Chapel of the Unnamed Faithful. The entire address will also be streamed live, click here to register and receive your attendance and/or receive streaming information. 

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Garrett-Evangelical and the Evanston NAACP work for ecological justice

In 1992, , to recognize her 20+ years of work fighting environmental racism—trying to build a better Chicago for her and her neighbors. Despite the widespread celebration, many of the injustices she sought to fix are still harming people thirty years later—particularly Black communities throughout Chicagoland. On , Garrett’s Center for the Church and the Black Experience and Stead Center for Ethics and Values are partnering with the Evanston branch of the NAACP to help educate the community about ongoing ecological harm and its adverse health effects. The keynote speaker will be Hazel’s daughter Cheryl Johnson, renowned activist and Executive Director of People for Community Recovery—the organization her mother founded.

When I speak with Evanston NAACP President Rev. Dr. Michael C. R. Nabors, he says environmental injustice was one of the first things he noticed when he moved to the area. “I was immediately aware of the waste management company on Church St., across from Mason Park,” he remembers, “You have this wonderful, historic place for African-Americans in Evanston and right on the other side of the street you have a waste incinerator.”

Long-term exposure to industrial pollution contributes to a wide array of illnesses, he observes. “It creates all sorts of health challenges from babies all the way to adulthood,” he says, “higher rates of asthma, skin conditions, cancer and more.” Too often, this kind of structural violence goes so unnamed in public life that suffering people suffering may be unaware of why they are hurting. “It’s not always easy to get a room filled with Black folks to talk about environmental injustice,” he says, “because they’re talking about economic and political injustice, police violence, housing inequality and so many other forms of racism.” But he believes the moment is ripe to deepen community understanding and response—and that the Church can play a central role.

Rev. Dr. Reginald Blount, Associate Professor of Formation, Leadership and Culture at Garrett and Director of the Center for the Church and the Black Experience, notes that the Black Church has always been essential in galvanizing collective action. “The move toward environmental justice is not unique,” he says, “It’s tied to how the Black Church has called for justice in so many other areas, acting as prophetic voices alongside the people and communities they serve to raise awareness and push for change.”

Moreover, both Nabors and Blount are quick to note that ecological violence isn’t just a political crisis—it’s a theological scandal, too. “When you look at issues of environmental injustice, it is always aimed at the least and the lowest, the left out, the poor, the marginal,” Dr. Nabors says, “theologically, people have decided that some groups of people are less deserving of clean air, soil and water—and it has to do with race.” This tragic reality asks us to consider the theological anthropology guiding our culture, Dr. Blount agrees. “Do we understand God as one who functions out of a hierarchy?” he asks, “Or do we know the God who created all of humanity with sacred worth?”

Facilitating these kinds of community conversations is part of the central calling for Garrett’s Stead Center for Ethics and Values. “We’re really focused on the ways people come together and talk about justice issues,” says Dr. Kate Ott, Professor of Christian Social Ethics and Director of the Stead Center, “enhancing moral communities one conversation at a time.” Dr. Ott notes that this focus on community partnerships is a distinct shift from how social ethics is often taught in seminaries. “The foundation of theological education, that we perhaps lost sight of along the way,” she says, “is that we learn in community, and we learn from community.”

Moral formation isn’t something that principally happens from something we read, but from our lived experiences. And students can learn from organizers in Evanston about how to bring a community together. “Many of our students come from all over the globe and are concerned about environmental issues,” she says, “What someone can learn from a small neighborhood in Evanston and the way that they are addressing the intersection of environmental and racial justice issues, it won’t look the same when they take it back to their congregation in India or their community in Kenya, but it’s going have similar threads, challenges and possibilities.”

This collaboration between Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary and the Evanston NAACP is the product of organic communal connection. Dr. Andrew Wymer is the Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship at Garrett, but it was his role as a concerned community member that led him to chair the NAACP branch’s Environmental & Climate Justice Committee. “Our vision is for an inclusive community rooted in liberation, free from discrimination, and without racism,” he says, “That’s still such a daunting task right here in Evanston in relationship to environmental justice, so our committee is trying to build relationships with other organizations around each event that we plan.” Dr. Nabors is effusive in his praise for Wymer’s collaborative approach to justice. “Listen, Andrew is key,” he laughs, “he has taken this bull by the horns and is working like you would not believe to create partnerships in this work.”

April’s event is the first in what will be a biannual conversation series on the topic, shifting location every six months between Garrett and hosts throughout Evanston. Organizers are hopeful that this sustained approach will keep an ongoing focus on issues affecting ecology and community health. “A long arc of justice implies the necessity for consistency,” Dr. Blount says, “And it requires strategic work. We must keep this issue in front of elected officials who have the resources to make needed change.” Ultimately, this not just a political necessity—it’s holy work. “We believe in a God who promises that the best is yet to come,” Dr. Nabors says, slipping into his cadence as a preacher, “I’m not talking about the other side of the Jordan River I’m talking about right here, right now. God works all things for good, but we have to educate ourselves and walk down the path of making things better.” Dr. Blount notes that, for those of us who follow Jesus, this work is the ministry he modeled. “Jesus was in the community,” he says, “It was in the community that Jesus identified communal needs and began to do something about it. It was in the community that he fought against the political and religious powers of that day that got in the way of persons being healthy and whole. So the question is: How are we walking in that way of Jesus?”

Interested in attending April’s Environmental Justice Conversation Series? Sign up today!

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On Thursday February 15, 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. the Very Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas will deliver the inaugural James H. Cone and Emilie M. Townes lecture, “Shades of Black: Doing Theology and Ethics in a World on Fire,” in-person at the Chapel of the Unnamed Faithful and livestreamed online. As the title indicates, the lecture series will feature the nation’s foremost religious scholars, reflecting on the scholarship and legacy of two of Garrett-Evangelical’s most influential alumni: Rev. Dr. James H. Cone and Rev. Dr. Emilie Townes. It’s only fitting that the first address will be delivered by Dr. Douglas, who studied under Dr. Cone for her Master and Ph.D., and has enjoyed decades-long friendship and collaboration with Dr. Townes. Delivering this address amid rising white Christian nationalism—precisely as the flames heat this already-inflamed world—I asked her why their work is so crucial for this moment.

“Drs. Townes and Cone never wrote in abstract ethical categories, but always from out of the struggle of Black life,” Dr. Douglas says, “They understand what a liberative ethic looks like in relationship to Black living—what it means to follow an incarnate faith.” Academic work that engages the question of what freedom demands cannot be divorced from the everyday realities of communities suffering injustice, she elaborates, “It must come together in this confluence of concern for justice and liberation grounded in the realities of the cross.”

Indeed, the focus of Dr. Douglas’ remarks will center around Christian hope in a context of overwhelming trauma. “What does it mean to speak about justice,” Dr. Douglas asks, “when there is a cross not simply at the center of our faith, but in the middle of these crucifying realities? How do we begin to understand God’s justice in such a way that we aren’t talking about a utopian hope or a rhetorical, abstract notion?” For Dr. Douglas, true hope is embodied in the communities that protest and resist dehumanizing systems. “And Dr. Cone and Dr. Townes’ dialogue partners,” she points out, “were always those who engaged in the struggle.”

Her passion for this lecture isn’t purely academic, though, it’s also deeply personal. “Dr. Cone reconnected me to my grandmother’s faith—helped me to understand that I could be both Black and Christian at a time when I was more than willing to give up my Christian identity to live more fully into my Black identity,” she remembers, “I read A Black Theology of Liberation and couldn’t believe that someone was saying God was Black, Jesus was Black.” After reading, she resolved to study under Dr. Cone. “But you always worry if the person of their books is the person in reality,” she confesses, “And the first thing that I discovered when I began studying with Dr. Cone was that the man of that book was also the man in reality. Not only his passion and uncompromising attitude toward justice but his uncompromising commitment to the Black struggle for freedom and to Black people.”

That lived integrity is also an essential part of her deep respect for Dr. Townes. “Emilie, with her poetic, literary sensibility opens up our moral imaginary—artists help us to see things that others can’t,” Dr. Douglas explains, “I can never remember a time when Emilie didn’t push me to see the complex other side, to see even a perspective that I might not want to deal with.” This relentless pursuit for truth pushes back against the easy answers that too often pass for cultural analysis. “Emilie always complicates narratives and reminds me. ‘It ain’t that easy,’” Dr. Douglas laughs, “She complexifies what you thought was going to be your easy ethical answer.”

It’s this combination of nuance and radical integrity that Dr. Douglas feels our world needs so badly. “They continue to speak of Christian faith in the face of white Christian nationalism,” she says, “reminding us that when we understand Christianity through this lens, it never accommodates subjugating, dominating oppression,” even when those forces proudly wear the cross.

And the grim reality of this cultural moment, she says, is part of why she’s so impressed by Garrett-Evangelical’s choice to found this lecture series. “When even academic institutions are running away from their histories, running away from things like DEI or anything that smells of ‘wokeness,’ Garrett isn’t running away,” she says, “It has the unmitigated gall to name a lecture series after these two people who carved the way, these radical voices in the theological/ethical dialogue that center the struggle for Black freedom, for Black women’s freedom, without compromise. I’m the incidental part of this,” she says with humor, “The real story here is that this religious institution, in the context in which we find ourselves living, is going out boldly to and say, ‘No. This is what it means to be an academic institution, to be committed to a more just future.’”

But perhaps it’s not surprising, she muses. After all, it’s also the institution that nurtured these two revolutionaries. “Garrett didn’t mold these two persons into whatever their image of Garrett might be, it gave them space to grow into their voices,” she says, “Dr. Cone writes about it—even with the tensions and antagonism. But still, without Garrett, he wouldn’t be Dr. Cone.” And, studying at a different period, Dr. Townes received the same gift. “There weren’t spaces for Black women to do anything—particularly for Black women to do their work from the vantage point of what is meant to be Black and female,” Dr. Douglas explains, “It says something that Garrett provided a space for Cone in one in one era and Townes in another era, to begin to do their work.”

In the end, it’s authentic commitment to helping people become fully who they are that nurtures hope. Institutions don’t have to be perfect, and will never be, but they can call us to collectively embrace God’s future. “Hope and protest signal, ‘No, this is not the way it is supposed to be, and this is not the way it is going to be,” Dr. Douglas says with a smile, “There will always be a movement that moves closer and closer to the realities of justice.”

To attend Dr. Douglas’ lecture online or in-person, please .

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Dotson Institute Officially Launches with Successful Inaugural Event in Atlanta

For there is still a vision for the appointed time; the vision speaks and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not delay. (Hab. 2:3)

What started as a decades-long dream of the Reverend Dr. Cynthia A. Wilson (G-ETS 2013) became a reality on August 17 through 20 as the Junius B. Dotson Institute for Music and Worship in the Black Church & Beyond (JBD Institute) celebrated its inaugural event in Atlanta, Georgia.

Nearly 100 Black pastors, musicians, and local church leaders from across the country came together for three days of training, networking, and professional development. Seminars spanning from topics such as post-pandemic worship planning to audio and video training to the liturgical movement were led by 24 renowned professionals in their respective fields.

“We were honored to have twenty-first-century leaders of congregational song, such as Dr. Diana Sanchez-Bushong; designers of worship, like Minister Monya Logan; liturgical dance sage, Dr. Kathleen Turner; distinguished academicians and practitioners in homiletics and biblical scholarship, such as Dr. Derek Weber and Dr. Renita Weems; and other stellar faculty leaders from a myriad of denominations and cultural contexts across the United States and beyond,” said Wilson, founder and director of the JBD Institute.

Announced in February 2022, the JBD Institute is organizationally situated within 91PORN’s Center for the Church and the Black Experience (CBE) and was formed in partnership with Discipleship Ministries, which supported the Institute with a $500,000 grant.

Reverend Jeff Campbell, general secretary of Discipleship Ministries, attended the inaugural event and exclaimed:

“What a blessing to attend and be a part of the inaugural event of the Junius B. Dotson Institute! Discipleship Ministries staff looks forward to supporting future events as we inspire, train, and resource current and future worship leaders globally. It was amazing to see the dreams and visions of this Institute become reality.”

A one-of-a kind-institute, the JBD Institute honors the late Reverend Junius B. Dotson, a nationally recognized pastor, speaker, and author who served as the general secretary of Discipleship Ministries of The United Methodist Church. Its mission is to train music and worship leaders in the area of sacred music and worship while creating an archive of music and scholarship that promotes and preserves Black Church music and its history. The inaugural event was the first of many future events and trainings that will be held around the United States.

“The Junius B. Dotson Institute Inaugural Celebration was truly a soul-stirring spiritual experience”

Said Reverend Dr. Reginald Blount (G-ETS 2006), director of CBE and Murray H. Leiffer Associate Professor of Formation, Leadership, and Culture at Garrett-Evangelical. “I am so excited that this one-of-a-kind global institute will be an integral part and vital partner in the ongoing work of the Center for the Church and the Black Experience.”

The inaugural event culminated in a celebration concert featuring Richard Smallwood and his group, Vision, along with Wilson with the JBD Institute’s Children’s and Choral Ensembles and Dance Ministry. More than 800 people were in attendance at Saint Philip AME Church for a night of “Total Praise!”

Some of the songs highlighted by the JBD Institute Ensembles and Dance Ministry throughout the night included “See What the Lord Has Done,” “Speak the Name,” and “When Sunday Comes,” while Smallwood and Vision sang selections, such as “Anthem of Praise,” “Trust Me,” and “Total Praise.” Interspersed throughout the evening were tributes of those who have paved the way for the work of the Institute. Those honored were Reverend Junius B. Dotson, Reverend Dr. Ruth C. Duck, Dr. Melva Wilson Costen, and Reverend Dr. William B. McClain.“

The inaugural JBD Institute was an inspirational and transformative experience. I would highly recommend worship leaders, laity, and clergy who are seeking to be empowered to attend the next event,” said Reverend Dr. Mike Bowie, national executive director of Strengthening the Black Church for the 21st Century and JDB Institute faculty member.

“For over five decades, I have sought to articulate this vision. In the words of my father, the Reverend Eli Wilson, ‘When God gives the vision, you can count on the provision.’ It is because of the support and collaboration of Discipleship Ministries and 91PORN that JBD Institute will continue to provide training, mentoring, and enrichment for leaders for the 21st century in contextual worship and sacred musics born out of Africana Church traditions,” said Wilson.

“And this is only the beginning.”

One can learn more about the JBD Institute at . The next event will take place in Evanston, Illinois, in February 2023. The JBD Institute is also available to local churches for leadership training in music and worship. Please e-mail jbd.institute@garrett.edu for more information.

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