Panel Discussion – Reparations: What’s it all about?
Join is for a panel discussion on Feb. 9th, from 5:30-7:30pm CST, on the topic “Reparations: What’s It All About?” This panel will discuss the history of Reparations, and its significance to the Black Community. LSTC’s Dr. Linda Thomas will moderate the discussion, with keynote speaker to be announced. The second panelist is Dr. Marvin E. Wickware, Jr., Assistant Professor of Church and Society and Ethics at LSTC. Light refreshments will be served. This panel will be held in person in Room 350 on the LSTC campus or virtually.
Speakers
Rev. Dr. Iva E. Carruthers
Rev. Dr. Iva E. Carruthers is a founding trustee and General Secretary of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, an interdenominational organization within the African American faith tradition focused on social justice issues. In 2020, she was appointed Executive Director of the newly established Center for Reparatory Justice, Transformation and Remediation at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. This Center advances consciousness of reparatory justice and engenders communities… engaged in the reparation’s movement for people of African descent within local, national, and global communities. Dr. Carruthers has a long history of engagement in community development initiatives and social justice ministry, fostering interfaith and racial reparatory justice throughout the world. She is Professor Emeritus and former Chairperson of the Sociology Department at Northeastern Illinois University, a published author a global advocate for social justice.
Dr. Marvin E. Wickware
Dr. Marvin E. Wickware is currently Assistant Professor of Church and Society and Ethics at LSTC. Wick ware’s research focuses on his experiences as a black man working in the predominantly white institutions of Duke Divinity School and a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation, which led to his dissertation topic of racial reconciliation in U.S. churches. Dr. Wickware is currently focusing on feminist theory and black studies, as his teaching works to connect an understanding of theoretical and theological perspectives to the church’s engagement with pressing political and social issues.
Moderator: Dr. Linda E. Thomas
Dr. Linda E. Thomas is full professor of theology and anthropology at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. In 2021, she was appointed Director of the Albert “Pete” Pero, Jr., and Cheryl Stewart Pero Center for Intersectionality Studies. Linda Thomas is Professor of Theology and Anthropology at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC). Her research and teaching interests focus on cultural anthropology and its intersection with theology, ethics, and African American and gender studies, with the aspiration to teach women and men to think critically, diversify their epistemological perspectives, and pursue social justice in a wide variety of contexts. In addition to fieldwork in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, South America, and the Caribbean, her publications include the books Under the Canopy: Ritual Process and Spiritual Resilience in South Africa (University of South Carolina Press, 1999), and Living Stones in the Household of God: The Legacy and Future of Black Theology (Augsburg Fortress, 2004). She is also co-editor of the Palgrave Macmillan series “Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice,” and was chosen to deliver the 2007 Taylor Lectures at Yale University.