The Christ Seminar held its inaugural event this past November eliciting great enthusiasm from those who participated.
It also left a number of people asking, "Who is the 'Christ' of the Christ Seminar?"
This is a conversation with Christ Seminar scholars Rita Nakashima Brock, Wilson Dickinson, and James Perkinson who will explore this question and more with Westar Academy Dean Celene Lillie.
Rita Nakashima Brock, Ph.D., is Senior Vice President and Director of the Shay Moral Injury Center at Volunteers of America. A professor of religion, women’s studies, and Asian American studies for 18 years, she was Director of the Fellowship Program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University from 1997-2001 and a fellow at the Harvard Divinity School Center for Values in Public Life from 2001-2002. She is the first Asian American woman to earn a doctorate in philosophy of religion and theology and an award-winning author. Her publications include Journeys By Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power (1988) and the co-authored books, Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury After War (2012), Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire (2008), Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering and the Search for What Saves Us (2001), and Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States (1996).
Wilson Dickinson, Ph.D., is a scholar, minister, and community organizer whose work takes place at the intersection of philosophical theology, sustainability, social justice, and spiritual practice. He teaches theology and is the Director of the Doctor of Ministry and Continuing Education Programs at Lexington Theological Seminary. He is the author of https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319978420, and https://www.amazon.com/Green-Good-News-Christs-Sustainable/dp/1532681836. He is also director of https://greengoodnews.org/, an organization that is rooted in a number of food justice ministries and which educates, cultivates, and organizes Christian communities to follow the ways of justice, joy, and simplicity. He holds a PhD from Syracuse University, an MDiv from Vanderbilt Divinity School, and is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Jim Perkinson, Ph.D., is a long-time activist and educator from inner city Detroit, where he has a history of involvement in various community development initiatives and low-income housing projects. He holds a PhD in theology from the University of Chicago, with a secondary focus on history of religions, is the author of White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity and Shamanism, Racism, and Hip-Hop Culture: Essays on White Supremacy and Black Subversion, and has written extensively in both academic and popular journals on questions of race, class and colonialism in connection with religion and urban culture. He is in demand as a speaker on a wide variety of topics related to his interests and a recognized artist on the spoken-word poetry scene in the inner city. Jim is interested in using a broad array of interdisciplinary tools to investigate the way socio-economic position, racial presupposition, and gender perspective already inform our values and orientation to life long before we begin to grapple with questions of identity, ministry or spirituality.
Celene Lillie received her Ph.D. at Union Theological Seminary and is an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of The Rape of Eve: The Transformation of Roman Ideology in Three Early Christian Retellings of Genesis, the director of translations for A New New Testament, and a co-author of The Thunder Perfect Mind: A New Translation and Introduction. She has been an active scholar at Westar Institute since 2015. Celene is the `Dean of the Westar Academy.