Two of the most prominent voices speaking to the American church about race and gender will appear together at a Baptist News Global event during the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s General Assembly in Dallas this June.
Anthea Butler of the University of Pennsylvania and Beth Allison Barr of Baylor University will join in conversation with Erica Whitaker, associate director of Baptist Seminary of Kentucky’s Institute for Black Church Studies.
Hyatt Reunion against the Dallas skyline
The event, billed as a “change-making conversation on race and gender,” will be Thursday, June 30, at 5:30 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Dallas Hotel. That is the site of CBF’s General Assembly, returning to an in-person gathering after two years online only due to COVID.
Butler and Barr will speak at BNG’s annual dinner gathering, which is open to the public but requires advance ticketing. Individual tickets and tables are available for advance purchase, and scholarship assistance is available to seminarians and young clergy.
“We are thrilled to present on the same program two of the most important voices speaking at the intersection of two of the most urgent issues of our day,” said BNG Executive Director Mark Wingfield. “Both Dr. Barr and Dr. Butler have much to teach us individually, so to hear them together, in conversation with each other and with us, will be a change-making conversation indeed.”
Beth Allison Barr serves as the James Vardaman Professor of History at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She earned a bachelor of arts degree from Baylor University and a master of arts and Ph.D. in Medieval history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of the bestselling book The Making of Biblical Womanhood.
Anthea Butler serves as the Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought and as chair of the department of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a Ph.D. in religion from Vanderbilt University. Her research and writing spans African American religion and history, race, politics, evangelicalism, gender and sexuality, media, and popular culture. Her most recent book is White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America. And her next book, currently in process, is Reading Race: How Publishing Created a Lifeline for Black Baptists in Post Reconstruction America.
Erica Whitaker previously served as senior pastor of Buechel Park Baptist Church in Louisville and has been active in that city’s racial justice efforts. She is part of a coalition of Black and white pastors who formed Empower West, a group dedicated to empowering western Louisville through education and economic development. She holds an undergraduate degree from the University of North Texas and a master of divinity degree from Baylor University’s George W. Truett Seminary. She is currently writing a dissertation for a doctor of philosophy degree at International Baptist Theological Study Centre in Amsterdam.
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