Thursday evening and Friday evening, I had the pleasure to attend the Brady Theology and Lecture Series at Northern Seminary in Chicago. The speaker this year was Reggie Williams, a gifted writer, Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus, and a gifted speaker. He spoke eloquently and vividly about how Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a White Aryan brilliant theologian at a very early age, engaged the Black Church at Abyssinian Baptist in Harlem, NY in 1930-31. That one year encounter dramatically changed Bonhoeffer’s understanding of engagement with race and ethnic social-economic issues in his homeland of Germany. It led one to think of how if more White evangelical churches engaged with their Black counterparts how we could find new answers to racial hatred in this country.

Also significant for me was the panel discussion that was held on Friday morning in the last session. The conversation of what the Black church experiences brings to the table of for formation of both Whites and Blacks was very interesting, especially the comments of David Swanson, a White pastor of a multi-ethnic church in Chicago. He spoke from a reserved and humble position of the need for White pastors and congregations to engage the Black faith community with equal parts of humbleness and submission to their engagements in the community rather than assuming superior positions of power due to one’s Whiteness.

One can listen to the panel discussion on the Northern Seminary Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/northernseminary. It is well worth the time.