“People persevered during their experience of dark times because faith sustained them, faith connected them, and faith gave them the courage to act according to the will of our righteous Lord.” When the Rev. Dr. Gina Robinson (G-ETS ’23) preached at Garrett Seminary in one of the Black History Month chapels organized by Garrett’s Center for the Church and the Black Experience (CBE), she wasn’t shy about naming the overwhelming violence and political injustice, but she also refused to grant these broader circumstances the final word. “The same faith that made our ancestors mighty makes us mighty,” Dr. Robinson continued. “We are blessed to carry forward this faith-filled work that was started before us. And we do not do this work alone because the great cloud of witnesses never leaves our side.”

It was exactly the kind of testimony that M.Div. student Medomfo Owusu hoped would flow when she and Ph.D. student Rev. Candace Simpson organized the chapel series—an interconnectedness that spans generations and lends strength in dire moments. “We will rejoice and be glad in this day not because of what is happening around us, but because of who is with us,” Owusu explains. “The fact that God took our ancestors out of colonialism and enslavement, from insidious acts of lynching, rape, and segregation—the gospel of Jesus says there will be life beyond that death. You survive your era by reflecting on the cloud of witnesses from the past and in birthing future clouds of witnesses.” Subsequent preachers carried forward the theme that Dr. Robinson began, with MAPCC student Rev. William Mack Jr. and Garrett alum Rev. Demetrius Davis likewise offering hope that faith will illuminate a future beyond our current crises.

That overarching message is part of what CBE director Rev. Dr. Reggie Blount believes the center offers both the Garrett community and the world beyond our doors. “Black America knows racial authoritarianism. These are not new times,” Garrett’s Murray H. Leiffer Associate Professor of Formation, Leadership and Culture says with wearied determination. “Even in oppressive moments, Black America has found ways to thrive and flourish—to see itself through challenges and keep hope alive.” Through liturgy, Owusu sought to instill chapel attendees with that embodied hope. “It’s something I wanted people to encounter,” she notes. “We speak about the body so much, but we don’t experience what it means to live out embodied liturgies on the regular—so when people feel warmth in their hearts or like they want to react to what the sermon stirs within them, they often don’t know what to do with those emotions.” Owusu observes that what outside observers often describe “spontaneity” in Black worship styles is frequently interplay between a carefully prepared order of service and the embodied reactions that hymns and proclamation elicit among those gathered.

For Dr. Blount, this tether between enfleshed, liturgical hope and Black communities isn’t incidental—it has always been a core feature of Black theologies. “Even when oppressive persons and groups try to make us think or feel like we are less-than, it’s an ability to return to a rootedness that reminds us that we’re made in God’s image,” he explains. “We do not allow external forces to define who we are in our essence.”

Part of that power for Owusu came from interacting with alums who used their experience at Garrett to launch vibrant ministries. “When you’re in seminary it can feel really overwhelming and exhausting,” she confesses. “It’s a joy to see people who have made it, who are thriving in the call that God has placed on them, especially as a Black person.” That exchange brings joy to Dr. Blount, as well. “Being able to witness how these graduates walk alongside God in the in the work that they’re doing—becomingleaders who pass on knowledge, guidance and direction—it brings gratitude to see that I have been a faithful steward of the students who’ve been entrusted to me,” he says. “I’ve reached the stage where part of my responsibility is to pass on wisdom, to remind younger generations that there’s really nothing new under the sun.”

For students like Owusu, it’s an invitation to step into that long tradition of Black theological excellence at Garrett—a lineage that includes intellectual giants like Dr. James H. Cone and Dr. Emilie M. Townes—and claim her place as someone who can bring healing into the world’s shattered places. “I’m asking, ‘Even in a moment where it feels like death, how is life still operating?’” she shares. “That doesn’t mean that we negate the despair that’s happening. But Black history and theologies contend that even if someone is putting a chokehold on me, I still need to breathe. This may be our reality, but I will dream of the next thing. I can use my laments to create light and birth new things in this time, because tears nourish the soil. Life will emerge from it.”

“Stories keep us human, connected to the core of who we are and what we want to pass on to future generations.” Passion kindles behind Kaitlin Curtice’s eyes as she discusses her most recent book, Everything Is A Story: Reclaiming the Power of Stories to Heal and Shape Our Lives. On March 11, Curtice will lead , the capstone event in a visit to Garrett Seminary where she will also guide students about how they can employ storytelling in their ministries. The library event, however, is free and open to the public—inviting everyone and anyone to consider how our lives are shaped by stories, and the ways we can harness narrative to better root ourselves for growth and healing. Organized and sponsored by Garrett’s Center for Ecological Regeneration, this expansive invitation bears the characteristic generosity of Curtice’s prose, beckoning the world toward transformation. “Stories are the music we set to our own survival as humans,” she observes. “Communities, peoples, and cultures have survived, thrived, and endured really difficult times through storytelling.”

Throughout Everything Is A Story, Curtice uses an oak tree to describe a story’s life cycle. Sprouted from the acorns we gather as children, narratives provide the tender shoots that nurture our dreams and longing. As in any garden, some of those nascent stories don’t survive, clearing space for others to flourish. Others continue to grow, yielding sturdy branches that support our weight and offer shelter from life’s passing storms. Some may even become towering trees that linger long past our own finite lives, offering acorns to the people who follow. “We don’t know which stories will become the past for future generations,” Curtice notes. “But we can hope that the ones we focus on today will help prepare them for the journey.”

An enrolled citizen of the Citizen Potawatomi nation, reflection on indigeneity has been a fixture of Curtice’s work since her widely-acclaimed debut . Here, this focus manifests as both praise for the role elders play as oral storytellers and a corrective against ever-shorter, market-driven attention spans. “The colonized mindset doesn’t honor our relationship to seasons or the earth, and its linear focus also doesn’t have space for thinking and living cyclically,” she explains. “I was with an elder recently where the whole point of us being together was just so I can listen to him, to be a sponge for a while. The Western mindset doesn’t value the patience and humility it takes to really sit with someone and listen to their story.” This Evanston Library gathering will create space for a deliberate slowness, to open participants to the rewards it offers. “We don’t sit well. We don’t listen well,” Curtice laughs. “Stories call us back: When they’re spoken into the air, they’re a gift from the person offering them to the people receiving them. That reciprocity is a sacred act.”

We will gather, however, while living through myriad stories’ disastrous effects. Curtice is not shy in naming that—while stories are uniquely powerful—power can cause harm as well as healing. “I categorize stories as loving, lethal, or liminal,” she explains. “Some stories are about kinship, care, and how we connect with each other. Some foster war, oppression, hatred, colonialism, and greed. Other stories are liminal—we’re not quite sure what to do with them, and it’s okay not to know where a story fits.” But understanding how widespread calamities are grounded in lethal stories provides a lens for how we can mindfully engage. “We have to decide how we want to be a part of those cycles,” Curtice says. “We’re not made for the bombardment of stories that we are experiencing right now, our nervous systems’ literally are not designed to hold all of this. Solidarity, kinship and care matter on every level, but we also must focus that energy.” Sometimes, a liberative ethic means confronting lethal stories. Other times, it means disentangling from narratives that confine our moral imagination so we can invest in a love that might supplant them. “We have to choose where and how we align our work,” she concludes.

Ultimately, Curtice hopes this collective gathering can offer participants tools for that discernment. “From the micro stories we tell ourselves or our families to the macro stories that structure our world, I want us to consider and understand them as living beings,” she says. “Whenever I spend time with people, I want them to leave feeling empowered—to know that they have agency in the stories they’re part of, and to know that engaging them will look different for each of us. But life can be overwhelming and difficult, and I want us to remember we’re never alone.”

“James Cone and Emilie Townes’ gift is the invitation to participate in a broader struggle.” Dr. Anthony Reddie offers a broad smile as he shares how their trailblazing legacy ignited his own passion for theological inquiry. On March 19, Oxford University’s Professor of Black Theology and director of the Centre for Black Theology will deliver Garrett Seminary’s third annual James H. Cone & Emilie M. Townes lecture. Looking forward to his address, Dr. Reddie is quick to name how both thinkers fundamentally shaped how he understands colonialism and white supremacy. “They’re heroes of mine, whose work profoundly informed and influenced me,” he says. “So, I’ll partly be sharing personal reflections on the significance of their scholarship to my life as a Brit. But I’ll also describe why their work will continue to be crucial, particularly given the rise of nationalism and the ways that a certain type of Christianity have been weaponized.”

If it wasn’t for Dr. Cone, Dr. Reddie might never have become a theologian in the first place. He originally intended to be a dramatist until a chance encounter changed his life forever. “I ducked into an Afrocentric bookshop just to get out of the rain, looking for a place to stay dry,” he laughs. “The book I picked up to kill time was Cone’s co-edited Black Theology anthology vo.1. I read it until the owner of the shop took the book out of my hands with the classic interjection, ‘Sir this is not a library, it’s a bookshop. Either buy the book or put it down.’�ĝ Dr. Reddie bought the book, then swiftly purchased A Black Theology of Liberation and Black Theology and Black Power. “Within a few months, that was it,” he reflects. “I didn’t want to be a playwright anymore; I wanted to be a theologian.”

Dr. Cone provided the initial spark, but it was Dr. Townes who nurtured that flame and expanded his sense of what was possible. “Cone may have given me content for Black theology but, right from the outset—because I am much more of a practical theologian and creative writing is part of my background—Townes was more influential for the form of my work,” Dr. Reddie reflects. “I’m very moved by the way she and other womanists use poetry and creative writing more generally, as ways of undertaking Black theological discourse. I even published a book called ‘Dramatising Theology’, in which I used drama as a means of doing Black Theology in Britain. While both scholars primarily address a U.S. context, Dr. Reddie quickly observed how their work also spoke to his experiences as the child of Jamaican immigrants in the United Kingdom. “Black theology has always been clear about what it feels like to be in a body that is seen as problematic,” he notes. “What does it mean to be treated as someone who does not belong, someone whose presence makes other people feel uncomfortable, angry, or disturbed?”

That perspective couldn’t be more timely, as influential politicians across the U.S. and the U.K. vilify migrants for myriad social ills, often dressing that nativism in Christianity’s clothes. “Christianity has a very ambivalent relationship to empire and migration,” Dr. Reddie explains. “At best it has been the means of resistance of those who are on the margines, those who are colonized. At worst, it has been how the empire colonized people.” Black theology, he contends, helps reclaim Jesus from leaders who would wield him for violence. “It locates Jesus not as Christus Victor, the all-powerful Christ who exerts the force of God,” he reflects. “Instead, it’s the Jesus of history—a Jew in the midst of the Roman Empire who’s perceived as a problem within the body politic, which is precisely why he gets crucified.”

In this age of ascendant nationalism, Dr. Reddie expresses appreciation for the way Drs. Cone and Townes resisted the lure to replace one form of hegemony with another. “It’s interesting that neither Cone nor Townes are Black nationalists,” he reflects. “Speaking truth to power means they insist on that work in all occasions, even when it applies to the Black church itself. Particularly for Townes, she’s sharply critical when that institution becomes patriarchal, when it becomes homophobic. Black folks don’t get a pass simply because they’re Black.” He’s also grateful for the way their scholarship encourages all people to participate in God’s work for liberation. “It’s why I will use my experience to help the audience think, ‘How does this map onto your particularities? What similarities do you see?’” he says. “I want them to reflect on how this enables them to participate in the broader project all of us are in.”

As much as he appreciates how Black theology speaks to wider liberation, Dr. Reddie will root his address in how the discipline specifically nurtures and celebrates Black culture. “In the Jamaican context, for example, it helps me see how patois—now officially called the Jamaican language—has always been a form of resistance,” he notes. “For a long time, it was condemned as bad and broken English spoken by poor, working class people. But there’s been a reclamation of that in my context to describe how this comes out of slavery, of people creating their own codes. Put simply, if someone can’t understand what you’re saying, that gives you a degree of agency to plot subversion while still within the white gaze.”

In a moment when Garrett has more international students than ever before, many of whom are navigating their own countries’ legacies of colonialism, Dr. Reddie hopes his story will offer an entry point for how Drs. Cone and Townes can empower that project. “While our stories are not the same, they are more alike than unalike because the issue is power, how what it normative is made central and what gets pushed to the margins is attacked,” he concludes. “It’s an invitation for all of us to collectively put our shoulder to the wheel and be involved in this anti-hegemonic struggle.”

We invite you to join us on March 19 at 4:00 p.m. CST in-person at the Chapel of the Unnamed Faithful or streamed online. Click here to RSVP and receive more information about the lecture.

When Dr. Emma A. Escobar began her work at Garrett Seminary in 2024, she was tasked with expanding the institution’s work with and for the Latine community. A year later, Garrett is gathering for a week of celebration with the debut of Centro Raíces Latinas (previously, the Hispanic-Latinx Center). This launch is the product of a year of work where Dr. Escobar led members of Garrett outside the seminary and into many communities from the Evanston Public Library all the way to Chile.

The Centro Raíces Latinas is built on the pillars of faith, solidarity, education, and culture, elements that became evident as Dr. Escobar met members of the Latine community in Evanston and asked, “How do you see a center housed in a theological seminary serving your community?” It’s a deeply intentional question considering the tensions between the Latine community, the church, and the academy, which Dr. Escobar explains stem from “issues of accessibility, power dynamics, and a lack of mutual trust.” For this reason, the Centro Raíces Latinas seeks to heal and nurture these relationships so that each entity may be enriched by their mutual wisdom.

The pillars of the Centro Raíces Latinas reflect an intersection between Garrett’s vision “for the healing of the world” and recurrent themes from the conversations Dr. Escobar had with Latine organizations, leaders, and community members. “Faith and solidarity came up together a lot when talking about social justice and justice movements,” says Dr. Escobar. “We had conversations about how we are living through these times, this government, and what is happening around the world. How are we in solidarity with one another? How do we engage in conversations of decolonialization as we look at how we practice our faith and read our sacred text?”

These questions revealed the need for another pillar: Education. This work has two sides—Latine communities learning from the resources Garrett has to offer and Garrett as an institution learning from el pueblo, the people. The Centro Raíces Latinas will nurture education in multiple ways. One important project is building partnerships with seminaries and universities across Latin America. Already this year, Garrett entered a partnership with the Methodist Church of Chile, beginning with a visit from Rev. Dr. Miguel Ulloa. The director of Chile Methodist Seminary, served as a speaker for the Escuela de Ministerio at Garrett,a gathering that trained Latine clergy and lay leaders throughout the North Central Jurisdiction. And this past summer, a delegation from Garrett visited Chile to learn about how the Methodist church is cultivating education, public health, and ecological regeneration.

Garrett students will also benefit from these partnerships. The Centro Raíces Latinas will offer chances for students to do their field education in different parts of Latin America. “One of my dreams for the Centro Raíces Latinas is that we can provide opportunities for our second or third generation Latine students to visit Latin America,” says Dr. Escobar. “I’m really excited to facilitate experiences for our students so they can go back to their roots and learn from our partner universities.”

The last pillar of the Centro Raíces Latinas is culture. As the Latine communities throughout the United States grow exponentially, seminaries are tasked with forming leaders capable of serving multicultural, diverse churches. Through the work of the Centro Raíces, Garrett can be a point of connection for non-Latine ministers to learn with, from, and about the Latine experience.

The re-launch of the Centro Raíces Latinas coincides with a moment when the Latine community in Chicago faces increased persecution from federal authorities. In the midst of these forces, Dr. Escobar reminds us that celebrating Latine culture is a form of building solidarity. “We love to gather and celebrate in the midst of the struggle,” she says. “Celebration is how we lift each other up, and it is a beautiful part of how our communities build resilience.”