Latest news with #UnionTheologicalSeminary
Black America Web
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Black America Web
Prophesy Deliverance—Why Morehouse Men Need To Hear From Dr. Cornel West
Dr. Marlon Millner pictured with Dr. Cornel West. Photo courtesy of Dr. Marlon Millner In the coming days, I will return to the red clay hills of Georgia to gather and celebrate hundreds of Black men who will graduate from Morehouse College, the nation's only historically Black college or university dedicated to serving male-identified Black students. It will be an especially momentous occasion—and not just because I will celebrate my 30th reunion as a proud 1995 graduate. The moment matters because graduates, families, faculty, and alumni alike will be challenged by a compelling and critically insightful commencement address by Dr. Cornel West. Dr. West is one of our nation's leading public intellectuals and a scholarly activist. There might not be a better person for this moment than Dr. West. With his longstanding commitments to social analysis, historical understanding, cultural criticism, political engagement, and progressive faith, West offers both a personal and public narrative of human maturation that my young, newly minted brothers will need for this critical moment in our world. When I was at Morehouse, some of the most important books I read were not books for classes, but books I read on my own. The authors that gripped me included poets and Black arts scholars Haki Madhabuti and the late Nikki Giovanni, theologian, the late James Cone, Black feminist, the late bell hooks, esteemed legal scholar and civil rights activist, the late Derrick Bell, and perhaps most importantly, Dr. Cornel West. I recall denying another Morehouse student their copy of a required course text by buying Race Matters in the campus bookstore. As a freshman, I eagerly read this book by the Union Theological Seminary professor, then on his way to Harvard University. My mind, heart and vocabulary all expanded as West grappled with a set of ideas, social practices, and the historical unfolding of the intractable hegemonic conditions of political subjugation, economic exploitation, moral degradation, and cultural dehumanization, which produced the nihilistic conditions of lovelessness, meaninglessness and hopelessness for so many Black people—then and now. Cornel West visited Morehouse in 1992, and he was honored by the college. He signed my book: 'Stay strong in the struggle, dear brother!' Those words compelled me to years of study, service, and struggle at Morehouse. West's book framed for me a life of the mind, committed to being a Black prophetic Christian intellectual rooted in grassroots movements, solidarity with other marginalized people, and deep and broad democratic commitments to serve, empower, and enable all to thrive with human dignity and possibility. While Race Matters may be West's best-known book, one of his earliest, Prophesy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity , might be his most important and most compelling for this moment. A year ago, I openly criticized my beloved alma mater for inviting then-sitting President Joseph R. Biden to deliver the commencement address and to receive an honorary degree. In an open letter to faculty, asking them to vote to deny the president an honorary degree, I said, 'When I studied at and graduated from Morehouse College in 1995, I was deeply shaped by the lives of former President Benjamin Elijah Mays, and alums Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. While Morehouse monumentalizes those persons on campus, there is no better monument to their lives at this moment than the moral courage to challenge a sitting United States president.' Those words, true then, are especially true now that Donald Trump has been re-elected president. Source: Pacific Press / Getty Cornel West has been one of the most consistent and compelling voices highlighting America's ongoing complicity in the triple evils Dr. King identified as racism, militarism, and hypercapitalism. Dr. West, in his own 2024 bid for the presidency, engaged in a campaign of truth, justice, and love. He boldly condemned the killing and capturing of hundreds of Israeli citizens by Hamas, and the United States' unilateral arming of Israel to prosecute a war beset with atrocities of killing tens of thousands of Palestinian non-combatants, and displacing and starving hundreds of thousands of others. West predicted that centrist civility and pandering to the middle class would not protect us from the rise of jingoistic, xenophobic, anti-Black economic oligarchy and state violence at home and abroad. More than 40 years ago in Prophesy Deliverance! , West told Black intellectuals and especially Christian theologians that if inclusion of the Black middle-class into a structurally racist capitalist economy and a racially constrained democracy was all we were seeking, we needed to long ago stop calling our training, leading, serving, and studying 'liberation.' After hearing from the apex of American power a year ago and seeing just how damaging that display of power has been, Morehouse Men would do well to listen to an organic intellectual from the streets of Sacramento, Calif., and the pews of the Black Baptist church; one who knows that success without sacrifice, money without morals, intellect without integrity, and power without empowering all may make these newly minted Morehouse Men mighty, but not worthy of our so-called mystique. Though Dr. West is not a Morehouse Man, like Dr. Mays, he has indelibly shaped Morehouse Men. He has taught, mentored, or influenced intellectuals like the esteemed Morehouse trustee and Black Studies and Religion scholar Dr. Eddie Glaude, and Harvard Divinity School scholar, Dr. Terrence Johnson. A bevy of Morehouse preachers were impacted by his years of teaching at Union, Harvard and Princeton, including such important prophetic voices as Morehouse trustee and pastor of Mt. Ennon Baptist Church of Maryland, Rev. Dr. Delman Coates; pastor of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church of Cleveland, Rev. Dr. Jawanza Colvin; pastor of the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church of New York City, Rev. Dr. Kevin Johnson; and pastor of the sanctuary of the civil rights movement, the Ebenezer Baptist Church of Atlanta, U.S. Senator Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock. Beyond Morehouse, one only needs to recall 2014 when Michael Brown lay dead in the streets of Ferguson, Mo., killed by a racist rogue cop, as clergy and activists descended. New leaders emerged in the name of #BlackLivesMatter: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, Michael McBride, Traci Blackmon, Starsky Wilson, and Charlene Carruthers, among many others. And early on, locking arms in solidarity, but not seeking the spotlight was Dr. Cornel West. Now, as an elder, senior scholar, veteran activist, and decades long dedicated progressive Christian, this humble brother can help let the voice of the suffering, marginalized, locked up, left out, and least of these speak—so that in a new generation of Morehouse Men, we can understand that our mystique remains in a moral tradition, ever expanding and evolving, challenging us to grow deep roots, and produce bountiful fruit of justice, love and equity. Dr. Marlon Millner is a visiting assistant professor of Religion and African American Studies at Wesleyan University, and a 1995 graduate of Morehouse College. SEE ALSO: Dear Old Morehouse: Can We Not With Cornel West? The Tragic Case of Rodney Hinton Jr. And The Trauma Of Black Grief In America SEE ALSO Prophesy Deliverance—Why Morehouse Men Need To Hear From Dr. Cornel West was originally published on Black America Web Featured Video CLOSE
Bloomberg
09-05-2025
- General
- Bloomberg
Pope Leo XIV has a 'Global Vision': Sister Mary C. Boys
Sister Mary C. Boys, Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary, reacts to the first remarks from Pope Leo XIV and what they reveal about the new pope's vision for the church and Catholics around the world. (Source: Bloomberg)
Bloomberg
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Balance of Power: New Pope Chosen
Watch Joe and Kailey LIVE every day on YouTube: Bloomberg Washington Correspondents Joe Mathieu and Kailey Leinz deliver insight and analysis on the latest headlines from the White House and Capitol Hill, including conversations with influential lawmakers and key figures in politics and policy. On this edition, Bloomberg Senior Editor Michael Shepard is in for Joe. Kailey and Joe speak with: Mary C. Boys, Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary.
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
You've likely heard the Serenity Prayer − but not its backstory
I'm not sure when I first encountered the Serenity Prayer, or when it first occurred to me to ask who wrote it. For much of my life it never occurred to me that prayers were the kind of things that people actually wrote down, especially something as popular as the Serenity Prayer: 'God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to tell the difference.' This simple, powerful sentence has been reprinted on everything from key chains and coffee mugs to tattoos and tea towels. For many people, it is probably most closely associated with 12-step recovery programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous. There, the prayer serves as a reminder both of human limits and of the fact that they do not define us. Originally, however, the prayer was written by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. For him, it was a call to confront the realities of the world with courage – relying not on one's own power but on God's grace. Over the years, the prayer has often been attributed to other Christian writers, including Thomas Aquinas, Augustine and Francis of Assisi. Many people might be surprised to discover that, far from being penned in an ancient European monastery, the Serenity Prayer was written less than a century ago in a cottage in western Massachusetts. Niebuhr was born the son of a German American pastor in Wright City, Missouri. He became a pastor himself, serving a congregation in Detroit before moving to New York to teach at Union Theological Seminary, where he gained recognition as a theologian, activist and social critic. His brother, H. Richard Niebuhr, also became a well-known ethicist and theologian, as did his sister Hulda. Today, Reinhold Niebuhr is probably best known as a founder of 'Christian realism.' As I describe in my book 'The Niebuhr Brothers for Armchair Theologians,' it is an approach to ethics grounded in the insight that human beings are called to strive toward their highest moral ideals, while recognizing our inability to fully achieve them. This idea is captured by the title of one of his best-known books, 'Moral Man and Immoral Society.' There Niebuhr argued that, while individuals are sometimes capable of acting purely from love for others, groups are not. When human beings form collectives, those collectives are ultimately capable of acting only from self-interest. Therefore, the most that can be expected from any society is not love but justice – which approximates, but never fulfills, the demands of love. Over the years, Niebuhr's thought became particularly influential in politics. His work was read and respected by liberal politicians such as Arthur Schlesinger and Hubert Humphrey, who was vice president under Lyndon B. Johnson. Some of these admirers had little use for his religion, and even dubbed themselves 'atheists for Niebuhr,' but they respected and embraced his insights into society. How then did Niebuhr come to write this prayer? His daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, recounts the story in her book 'The Serenity Prayer.' She was a girl when Niebuhr first composed the lines for a worship service near their summer home in Heath, Massachusetts. Later, as she tells it, he contributed a version to a prayer book for soldiers being shipped off to fight in World War II, and from there it eventually migrated to Alcoholics Anonymous. Niebuhr did not believe that prayers should be copyrighted, she writes, and never profited from its popularity – though friends would gift him with examples of Serenity Prayer kitsch, such as wood carvings and needlework. Yet the best-known version of the prayer is not quite the version that Niebuhr originally wrote. According to Sifton, his first version read, 'God, give us the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, the courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.' The differences between the two versions are subtle but significant, emphasizing themes that were central to Niebuhr's thought. He did not simply pray for serenity, but for grace. He did not pray for courage to change what can be changed, but only for what should be changed. And crucially, it is not an individual prayer, but collective: 'grant us,' not 'grant me.' Niebuhr believed that while the highest moral achievements could be attained only by individuals, constructive social change was possible only by working together for justice. The Serenity Prayer in all of its forms rests on Niebuhr's hard-won sense of history's tragic dimension, borne of his experience of two world wars and a global depression. He recognized that even the most courageous actions are not guaranteed to succeed. But Niebuhr was no fatalist and did not believe uncertainty was a reason not to act. On the contrary, he believed that as human beings we are obligated to enter the fray of social conflict – not with an arrogant sense of our own superiority, but with a humble recognition of our limits. As he wrote elsewhere: 'Nothing worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.' In the end, for Niebuhr, it is God's grace that determines the final course of history, rather than our own actions – enabling us to accept the reality that the outcomes of our actions are often out of our hands. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Scott Paeth, DePaul University Read more: What Comey learned from theologian Reinhold Niebuhr about ethical leadership Feeling political distress? Here are coping strategies a psychologist shares with his clients After 50 years, 'liberation theology' is still reshaping Catholicism and politics – but what is it? Scott Paeth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
