The University will host three notable speakers on race and reconciliation during the second annual Jess Moody Faith & Culture Forum on Feb. 13.
The forum, “A Dialogue on Racism: Looking Back, Looking Forward,” will help participants understand our past struggles with racism, both as a nation and the church, and explore how we can respond as we move forward.
Guest speakers include Jemar Tisby, author of “The Color of Compromise” and national speaker; Rev. Dr. John Nunes, president of Concordia College-New York and Dr. Oscar García-Johnson, assistant provost for the Center for the Study of Hispanic Church and Community at Fuller Seminary.
Daytime sessions will be at the University. An evening session will be at Tabernacle Church, 801 Eighth St. in West Palm Beach.
The event is free and open to the public, although online registration is requested. Call the School of Ministry at 561-803-2543 for more information.
Tisby earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame and his Master of Divinity from Reformed Theological Seminary. He is president of The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, where he writes and speaks about race, religion, politics. He is cohost of the Pass The Mic podcast. His writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and CNN. He is pursuing a doctorate in history at the University of Mississippi with a focus on race, religion, and social movements in the 20th century. His first book, “The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism,” was released in January 2019 from Zondervan.
Nunes earned a doctorate from Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. In 2016, he became the ninth president of Concordia College-New York, an institution of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Previously, he was the Jochum Chair, an endowed interdepartmental professor, at Valparaiso University in Indiana. Dr. Nunes and Alberto Garcia co-wrote “Wittenberg Meets the World: Reimagining the Reformation from the Margins” (Eerdmans, 2017). Additionally, Dr. Nunes served as president and CEO of Lutheran World Relief, a $50 million organization with offices in 17 countries that works to alleviate poverty and human suffering. Before that, he was an inner-city pastor in Dallas and Detroit.
García-Johnson is associate professor of theology and Latino/a studies. He assumed leadership of Fuller Seminary’s Centro Latino in October 2015. He teaches in English, Spanish and Portuguese. For 11 years, he served as a regional minister with the American Baptist Churches of Los Angeles and planted four new churches in Southern California. García-Johnson is a social activist involved in faith-rooted holistic justice initiatives with Matthew 25 of Southern California, LA RED, and CCDA. He offers conferences on leadership development and ministry across the Americas, Asia, and Africa. He is committed to facilitating thriving ministry environments for Latinx Millennials and Latina women.
