More than 50 people gathered in Marsh Chapel Thursday afternoon to celebrate the launch of the Center for African-American Religious Research and Education, which will study religious issues in the African-American community, according to School of Theology Dean of Student Affairs Imani-Sheila Newsome-Camara.
The goal of the center is to ‘promote research on pressing contemporary religious issues of Africans, African-Americans and other people of color in diasporatic communities,’ Newsome-Camara said.
‘The center is an important step in recognizing the diversity of the religious experience,’ said the Rev. Ray Hammond, an honorary alumnus of BU. ‘Diversity is a great strength, and in the religious experience we can all benefit from it.’
Amid chanting, clapping and stomping, the audience listened to an inaugural lecture from Hammond and his wife, the Rev. Gloria White-Hammond, about their experiences helping to free slaves in Sudan.
Both also discussed their admiration for Rev. Prathia L. Hall, a former STH professor who inspired Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. The center’s opening is also a tribute to Hall, who passed away in August 2002.
Hall led prayers during the civil rights movements intoning her vision of the future with the now familiar phrase ‘I have a dream,’ according to a program from the event. Attending one of these prayer sessions on the site of a church burned down by the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia inspired King to use this expression in his famous speech.
The Hammonds are co-pastors of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Boston and said they attended many of Hall’s sermons when she worked at BU.
White-Hammond said she admired Hall’s strength and courage as a young woman on the forefront of the civil rights movement.
‘She was a barrier breaker as a woman during those combat days and she sparked the level of passion in young people to go on to do amazing things,’ she said.
In her speech, White-Hammond described her four trips to Sudan a northern African nation plagued by civil war for more than two decades as a medical missionary working to create an underground railroad for more than 10,000 Northern slaves escaping to villages in the South.
‘Slavery anywhere jeopardizes freedom,’ she said.
White-Hammond also praised Hall, saying she ‘poured out her soul’ for her cause and would ‘not rest until freedom comes.’
The two-week inaugural series of worship services and lectures started Tuesday with a reception and service led by Bishop Vashti McKenzie at Harvard Divinity School.
‘I applaud Dean Newsome[-Camara] for having the vision to create this,’ said Pauline Jennett, a second year STH student. She said the series thus far, especially a duet sung at yesterday’s service, has been ‘stirring and moving.’
During the event, STH graduate student Sarah Person led a rhythmic rendition of ‘Ella’s Song,’ which proclaimed that ‘we who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.’
She said she hoped the lecture would accurately reflect another of the center’s goals, which is to ‘join people in harmony and talk about the journey to justice and liberation for all.’