Vanderbilt University will host a panel discussion, “Keeping Our Promise: HIV/AIDS Ministry and the Black Church” on April 10, from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m. in room G-23 at the Divinity School.
The event is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Kelly Miller Smith Institute on Black Church Studies and the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender and Sexuality.
Panelists will include:
* Victor Anderson, associate professor of Christian ethics, African American studies and religious studies, Vanderbilt University. He has published two books: Beyond Ontological Blackness: An Essay in African American Religious and Cultural Criticism ([1995] 1999), and Pragmatic Theology: Negotiating the Intersection of an American Philosophy of Religion and Public Theology (1999). He has a third book forthcoming, entitled, Creative Exchange: A Constructive Theology of African American Religious Experience.
* The Rev. Sonnye Dixon Jr., community activist and pastor of Hobson United Methodist Church. Dixon is a past president of the Nashville NAACP.
* Dwayne Jenkins, HIV education coordinator and Brothers United coordinator at Nashville Cares.
* Monique Moultrie, Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University.
The Kelly Miller Smith Institute on Black Church Studies was established in honor of the late Kelly Miller Smith Sr., assistant dean of the Vanderbilt Divinity School from 1968 until his death in 1984. The institute perpetuates his legacy of theological and academic excellence and prophetic witness. The African American church remains the primary institution in the African American community committed to the liberation of persons and groups who suffer from racial and social oppression. The work of the Kelly Miller Smith Institute brings together the African American church community and African American educational institutions, as partners with the Vanderbilt Divinity School to study and research issues important to the practice of faith and ministry in the African American church.
The Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender and Sexuality is designed to foster conversation about religion, gender, and sexuality. The program seeks to provide education and encourage communication within and across religious affiliations, ideological bases and cultural contexts.
Nashville Cares is Tennessee’s leading community-based AIDS service organization. Its mission is to promote and participate in a comprehensive and compassionate response to HIV and AIDS infection through education, advocacy and supportive services.
The Brothers United Network is a collective of African American Gay/SGL Men that seek to provide community empowerment and self actualization through its individual chapters in Nashville, Chattanooga, Memphis, Knoxville and West Tenn. The organization strives to provide continuous psychosocial, life coaching, affirming pastoral care and healthy social supports to the African American lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community to enhance their lives.
Media Contact: Melissa Pankake, (615) 322-NEWS
melissa.r.pankake@vanderbilt.edu