The Candler Foundry is taking TheoEd to Florida.
St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Orlando, Florida will host this year’s TheoEd, which takes place Friday, October 9 at 7:00 p.m. ET. A livestream option is also available.
Three Candler alumni, Tom Berlin 86T, Carlton Mackey 05T, and Ingrid Rasmussen 10T are featured speakers, along with Kat Armas, Christopher Carter, and Seth Schoen.
Each speaker will present 20-minute or less, TED-style talks on God, faith, and justice – without notes.
Since 2017, the TheoEd series has gathered curious people, hungry for true and authentic conversation to engage and ignite discussions about religion and the transformative power of faith in lives and communities.
Tickets are available on the TheoEd website. In-person general admission tickets are $15, while livestream tickets are free (registration is required). For large group discounts or details on hosting a virtual audience, email TheoEd@emory.edu.
Meet the TheoEd Orlando speakers:
Kat Armas
Armas is a Cuban American writer, speaker, and theologian from Miami, Florida. She holds a ThM from Vanderbilt Divinity School, and a dual MDiv and MAT from Fuller Theological Seminary. Her first book, Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach Us About Wisdom, Persistence and Strength, sits at the intersection of women, decolonialism, the Bible, and Cuban identity. Her second book, Sacred Belonging: A 40-day Devotional on the Liberating Heart of Scripture invites readers to encounter the Bible through a decolonized lens, lifting up themes of creation, wisdom, spirit, the body, and the feminine.
Tom Berlin 86T
Berlin was elected as a bishop of The United Methodist Church on November 2, 2022, by the Southeastern Jurisdiction and has served the Florida Episcopal Area since 2023. A native of Winchester, Virginia, he received his Master of Divinity from Candler and was ordained the following year. Berlin has served churches of all sizes, including 25 years as the lead pastor of a multi-site, multi-staff congregation near the nation’s capital.
Christopher Carter
Carter is associate professor of theology, ecology and race at Methodist Theological School in Ohio. He approaches religious studies as a liberation ethicist committed to exploring how the moral economy of U.S. religious thought and culture impact the everyday lives of marginalized populations, particularly African American and Latinx communities. He, along with Seth Schoen, founded Racial Resilience, an anti-racism training method that helps individuals develop an anti-racist conscience and institutions develop an anti-racist ethos. Carter earned his PhD in religion with a concentration in ethics and society from Claremont School of Theology and is the lead pastor of The Loft at Westwood United Methodist Church.
Carlton Mackey 05T
Mackey’s work blends his unique combination of social consciousness, creativity, scholarship, and social connection to create powerful impressions that invite new discovery and personal transformation. As the assistant director of education, community dialogue and engagement at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, Mackey utilizes complex visual culture to strengthen self-awareness, frame productive public discussion, and engender institutional empathy regarding the fundamental issues defining contemporary society. Mackey is also the creator of BLACK MEN SMILE®, a viral social media platform and apparel brand with a mission of “amplifying the revolutionary power of Black joy,” and is also the author of 50 Shades of Black: Sexuality and Skin Tone in the Formation of Identity.
Ingrid Rasmussen 10T
Rasmussen is lead pastor at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, having joined the community in 2013. Ingrid grew up in a small town in Southwest Minnesota as the daughter of a church organist, which meant that she spent more than her fair share of time under the organ pipes on Saturday nights. It’s there that her curiosity about the intersection of faith, the church, and public life began. Years of study at Augustana College and Candler combined with her work in a free health care clinic led her into ordained ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She cannot imagine a better life’s call.
Seth Schoen
Schoen, along with Christopher Carter, founded Racial Resilience, an anti-racism training method that helps individuals develop an anti-racist conscience and institutions develop an anti-racist ethos. Understanding anti-racism as a process of spiritual formation, Schoen’s research and teaching interests are in contemplative and spiritual practices. Most specifically, he is interested in the cultivation of compassion and committed to educating people about the power of compassion and the way that race and racism impact our worlds.
Learn more and register to attend TheoEd Orlando.
Previous TheoEd Talks are available on the TheoEd website.