As part of its new initiative in public theological education, Candler is partnering with First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta to sponsor TheoEd Talks on Sunday, September 22, featuring Austin Channing Brown, Mihee Kim-Kort, Jonathan Merritt, and Ted Smith. The event will take place at 5:00 p.m. in the Ivan Allen III Pavilion of The Carter Center. Tickets are $20 general admission/$10 for students and can be purchased through the TheoEd website.
TheoEd Talks is an ecumenical speaker series where leaders in the church and the academy share “the talk of their lives” in 20 minutes or less, aimed at sparking conversations that change the way people think about God, religion, and the power of faith to change lives.
Austin Channing Brown is a speaker and author who helps communities of faith practice racial justice and reconciliation together. In her book, I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness (Convergent Books, 2018), she reflects powerfully on a lifetime spent navigating America’s racial divide and her own personal journey towards self-worth in an era of rising racial hostility. Along with speaking and writing, she serves as resident director and multicultural liaison for Calvin University, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Born in Seoul, Korea, Mihee Kim-Kort is a Presbyterian minister, speaker, and storyteller whose writings and books address issues ranging from Asian American feminist theology to the intersection of faith, family and ministry. Her most recent book, Outside the Lines: How Embracing Queerness Will Transform Your Faith (Fortress Press, 2018), explores how becoming aware of her queer sexuality brought her closer to Jesus and taught her how to love better.
Recently named by Outreach magazine one of the top 30 young leaders reshaping Christian leadership, Jonathan Merritt 10T is an award-winning author who writes on faith and culture for outlets such as USA Today, The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, Christianity Today, and The Atlantic. His most recent book, Learning to Speak to God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words Are Vanishing and How We Can Revive Them (Convergent Books, 2018), helps people re-learn how to speak about faith in ways that are honest, authentic, and understandable in an increasingly pluralistic and postmodern society.
Ted A. Smith is professor of preaching and ethics at Candler. His academic work delves deeply into topics related to social ethics, economic inequality, issues in contemporary preaching, and the future of theological education. His book Weird John Brown: Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics (Stanford University Press, 2014) works through memories of the raid on Harpers Ferry to show the limits of social ethics for thinking about violence.
The Carter Center is located at 453 John Lewis Freedom Parkway, Atlanta, GA 30307.