Black Lives Matter activist to speak at event

Prominent national #BlackLivesMatter activist DeRay McKesson will be among the speakers at an upcoming forum exploring race and religion presented by the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

McKesson, who joined protests in Ferguson, Mo., after Michael Brown was killed there by Darren Wilson in August of 2014, has become one of the main leaders "contesting the overpolicing of African Americans, police brutality and state violence," according to the seminary.

McKesson will talk Monday at the first session of the two-day "Race, Faith and Community" consultation event, which is free and open to the public.  McKesson, a graduate of Bowdoin College who previously worked as an educator and school administrator in Minneapolis, has used Twitter as his primary platform.

The forum is being held to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the University of Louisville's Grawemeyer Awards, annual prizes designed to promote the formulation of world-changing ideas. Two of the other four speakers at the event are winners of the Grawemeyer Award in Religion, for ideas pertaining to race and religion.

They are  Barbara Savage, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and the 2012 winner for her book, "Your Spirits Walk Beside Us:  The Politics of Black Religion," Harvard University Press; and the Rev. Willie James Jennings, an associate professor of theology and Africana studies at Yale Divinity School and the 2015 winner for "The Christian Imagination:  Theology and the Origins of Race," Yale University Press.

McKesson's talk will be at 5 p.m. Monday at Fourth Avenue United Methodist Church, 318 W. St. Catherine St., followed by a reception at 6 and worship service at 7 led by the Rev. Leslie Dawn Callahan, senior pastor at Saint Paul Baptist Church in Philadelphia and a religious history scholar specializing in independent African-American Christianity.    Forum sessions will continue Tuesday at the seminary, 1044 Alta Vista Road, off Lexington Road near Cherokee Park.

Through the "immersive" experience the event is intended to provide, "It is our hope that ... we will identify ways in which religion can foster commitment and connection in our pursuit of racial justice," the Rev. Felicia LaBoy, the seminary's associate dean for black church studies and advanced learning, said in a statement.

McKesson also was in the audience in New York in June when Hillary Clinton announced  her presidential candidacy, after being invited by Democratic officials, according to a July 22 Washington Post story online.  McKesson, 30 at the time of the Post story, also was a guest lecturer early this month at Yale Divinity School at Yale University.

At Yale, McKesson was quoted as saying, "Protest is as American as America itself," in an online story published Oct. 7 on the divinity school's website.

"Unlike in the 1960s, the movement this time did not spring out of the church," McKesson also was quoted as saying.  "I've been trying to get the church to step up more, hoping the theology of protest will catch up. ... The church (has been) more cautious than Christ would have been."

He also charged that "America has weaponized blackness,"  saying that in the eyes of society and the police, "I am always armed."

The other main speaker at the "Race, Faith & Community" forum in Louisville is activist Christopher Doucot, co-founder in 1993 of the Hartford Catholic Worker community in the north end of Hartford, Conn., which promotes transcending generational, gender, racial, geographical and class barriers.  It also houses the homeless, feeds the hungry and works with children as part of its mission.

For a full schedule of events and more information, go to  www.lpts.edu.

Reporter Martha Elson can be reached at (502) 582-7061 and melson@courier-journal.com.  Follow her on Twitter at @MarthaElson_cj.