Ohio Mobile Institute | We Can’t Breathe: Racism as a Moral, Spiritual, and Public Health Crisis
As the trial for the vicious killer of Mr. George Floyd proceeds, it is increasingly apparent that a racist, patriarchal, xenophobic knee is on the necks of many racialized minorities in America. “We Can’t Breathe: Racism as a Moral, Spiritual, and Public Health Crisis” is the theme for the April 22-24th Ohio Mobile Institute.
Dr. Joy Bostic, associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) and the founding director of the minor in African and African American Studies will give the keynote address Thursday, April 22nd at 6:00 pm. She is a program faculty member of the Women’s and Gender Studies. Rev. Howard Wiley will moderate a Q & A session following her address.
April 22 Keynote Address with Dr. Joy Bostic and Rev. Howard Wiley moderating Q & A.
On Friday April 23rd two panels of area leaders will convene in the morning and afternoon. The 10:00 am panel will be moderated by Rev. Kima Cunningham with panelists Bishop Marcia Dinkins, Dr. Terrance Dean, Bishop Jerome McCorry and Rev. Dr. Susan K. Williams Smith who will discuss Race and Gender issues. The 1:00 pm panel will be moderated by Rev. Gerald Cooper, JD with panelists Rev. Dr. Mila P. Cooper, Dr. Tejai Beulah, Dr. Zachery Williams, and Mr. Randell McShepard who will discuss economics and politics.
All speakers and panelists are urged to return on Saturday morning for a talk-back session moderated by Rev. Bruce Butcher in which mobile institute attendees will wrestle with solution-oriented narratives for the way ahead in light of hindsight, insight, and foresight revealed in the 2-day training sessions. This forum will feature breakout room discussions. The Ohio Mobile Institute is free and open to the public.
We have special musical guests, HUE PEOPLE who will be sharing their gift of music on Friday at 12pm Central, immediately following the morning session, and Saturday morning, to begin the concluding session at 10am Central.
We are pleased to welcome Hue People Vocal Ensemble to the Ohio Mobile Institute as they share their gift of music. They will be performing in between the morning and afternoon sessions on Friday, April 23, at 12PM Central, and again on Saturday, April 24 at 10AM Central, to open the morning session.
Learn more about Hue People, here
SCHEDULE
Thursday, April 22, 6PM: Keynote address with Dr. Joy Bostic
See zoom link on online event section of Eventbrite
Friday, April 23, 10AM and 1PM: Panels
Streamed to Public Theology Facebook page
Saturday, April 24, 10AM: Talkback
See zoom link on online event section of Eventbrite
Featured guests
Dr. Tejai Beulah
Dr. Tejai Beulah is currently an Assistant Professor of History, Ethics, and Black Church and African Diaspora Studies at Methodist Theological School in Ohio where she teaches courses in Church History and African American religious and ethical studies. Her teaching and research interests are in African American religious intellectuals, gender and sexuality in U.S. history, African American music and social movements, and race/ethnicity studies. She is currently at work on a monograph titled, Soul Salvation, Social Liberation: Race and Evangelical Christianity in the Black Power Era, 1968-1979.
Dr. Joy Bostic
Dr. Joy R. Bostic, is an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at CWRU and the founding director of the minor in African and African American Studies. She is a program faculty member of the Women’s and Gender Studies and Ethnic Studies programs and has served as an interim vice president for CWRU’s Office of Inclusion Diversity and Equal Opportunity. Bostic is a Mellon Administrative Fellow and serves as a member of the steering committee for the Mysticism Unit of the American Academy of Religion. She is the author of several book chapters and scholarly articles on race, gender and religion and is the author of African American Female Mysticism: Nineteenth-Century Religious Activism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Bostic’s forthcoming book, Performing Black Gods: Religion, Ritual and Resistance in African American Popular Culture (Routledge, 2021), explores religion, ritual and race in visual culture, music and dance. She is a member of the Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race (TRRR) and is a co-editor of TRRR’s forthcoming volume Black Religious Landscapes (Peter Lang, 2020).
Professor Bostic received a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Indiana University and went on to earn a Juris Doctor and Master of Arts in public policy and management from The Ohio State University. She attended Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary where she was awarded the Master of Divinity degree. After graduating from seminary, she was ordained a Christian minister at Second Baptist Church in Evanston, Illinois. While attending Garrett-Evangelical, she worked as a research assistant for the Religion in Urban America Project, an ethnographic study based at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Reverend Bostic received her Ph.D. in systematic theology from Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York. While living in New York City, she served as an associate minister at Second Canaan Baptist Church and a chaplain for the New York Liberty. She also taught courses in theology and religion as an adjunct professor at Fordham University at Lincoln Center and Auburn Seminary and she was the coordinator of the Barnard Columbia Rape Crisis/Anti-Violence Support Center and the executive director of the African American Task Force on Violence against Women, a community-based organization in Central Harlem. An artist at heart, Professor Bostic is a student of dance, photography, and the textile arts.
Rev. Bruce Lambert Butcher
Rev. Bruce Lambert Butcher is a native of Louisville Kentucky. He was educated in the parochial and public school systems of Louisville and Hopkins County, Kentucky. He is a graduate of Murray State University and Payne Theological Seminary. While a student at Murray State Reverend Butcher cofounded an organization that focused on graduating Black males from Murray State as well as raising scholarship monies for deserving students attending Murray State.
Rev. Butcher has a Doctor of ministry from Payne Theological Seminary.
His thirty five year ministry is framed by the words Jesus spoke in the gospel of St. Luke chapter four, verses eighteen and nineteen where it states, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, tp preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Rev. Bruce Butcher has served churches in Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Ohio and is currently serving as the pastor of St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church in Akron Ohio. Rev. Butcher founded Concerned Clergy and Community Leaders of Akron and Vicinity. This organization is committed to addressing social justice issues in Akron and surrounding communities. Rev. Butcher is a founding member of the FreedomBLOC(Black Led Organizing Collaborative). FreedomBLOC is an organization dedicated to the political education of Black people. Rev. Butcher is a board member of Stand Up for Ohio, a statewide organization promoting the creation of good jobs and strong communities. Rev. Butcher is a member of Ohio Prophetic Voices, a statewide clergy network committed to moving a powerful prophetic narrative around racial and economic justice. Rev. Butcher is a life member of the N.A.A.C.P. and has served the Akron chapter as vice president and as director of clergy involvement. Rev. Butcher recently worked as a political consultant for the 2020 election in both the states of Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Rev. Butcher is also the president of the Payne Theological Seminary Alumni Association. During his administration alumni giving has increased substantially.
Rev. Butcher is a proud member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Incorporated. Rev. Butcher hobbies include collecting vinyl records, photography and collecting semi-precious stones.
Pastor Gerald A. Cooper
Pastor Gerald A. Cooper is dedicated to the ministry of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ and developing Christian disciples through sound biblical teaching and Holy Spirit inspired preaching. He serves as the pastor of Wayman Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Dayton, Ohio.
Before coming to Dayton in 2013, Pastor Cooper served as the pastor of St. James A.M.E. Church in Cleveland, Ohio. He has also served as the pastor of St. James A.M.E. Church in Erie, Pennsylvania; St. Paul A.M.E. Church in Zanesville, Ohio; and Mt. Pisgah A.M.E. Church in St. Clairsville, Ohio.
Pastor Cooper is a native of Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his B.A. degree from the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio, where he majored in Economics. He earned the Juris Doctor degree, from Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio, where he graduated with honors and was inducted into the Order of the Curia. Pastor Cooper earned the Master of Divinity degree with honors from Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio.
While he is committed to tending to the spiritual needs of the congregation for which he is blessed to serve as pastor, Pastor Cooper has also had the opportunity to preach and teach in various parts of the country. Additionally, Pastor Cooper conducts workshops and seminars on topics relating to pastoral conduct and legal issues that impact churches and ministries.
Pastor Cooper has taken an active role in the improvement of the communities in which he has pastored through his service in various civic and community organizations. He has served in various leadership positions on the connectional, district, and annual conference levels of the A.M.E. Church. Pastor Cooper is also an Associate Faculty member at Payne Theological Seminary.
As an attorney, Pastor Cooper is a solo practitioner focusing primarily in the areas of nonprofit corporation law and contract negotiation. He previously practiced with the law firm of Thompson Hine in Columbus, Ohio, in the areas of telecommunications regulatory law and commercial law. While he still handles legal matters on a limited basis, he left the full-time practice of law to devote himself to the full-time service of God.
Pastor Cooper is married to the Rev. Dr. Mila P. Cooper and they are the proud parents of Nia Patrice and Mariah Nicole, and the grandparents of Grace.
Rev. Kima R.H. Cunningham
Rev. Kima R.H. Cunningham is an ordained minister but is first and foremost a servant committed to preparing people for God’s purpose and connecting people to God’s presence.
A serious student committed to unearthing those principles that form the foundation for living purposeful, intentional lives, she is the proud, yet humble pastor of the Richards Chapel United Methodist Church in Troy, Ohio where she is loving her people and growing the ministry. She also serves as Director of Interfaith Campus Ministry and Campus Pastor at Central State University, where she conducts weekly worship services on Sunday afternoon as well as conducting engaging bible study during the week. She is excited to have her husband serve alongside her in both of these ministries.
A lifelong member and associate minister at the Mt. Enon Baptist Church, she served in various youth and young adult ministries and founded Women’s’ Ministries under her father-in-law, Rev. John F. Cunningham. She was licensed under the pastorate of Rev. Dr. Harold Cottom and ordained under the pastorate of Rev. Cory Pruitt.
Also a dynamic and energetic teacher, she specializes in workshops designed to spiritually empower and celebrate women and men alike. Also a much sought-after conference speaker, Rev. Cunningham has spoken to various churches across denominational lines, organizations and women’s' groups across the country.
She has a B.A. in Journalism from the Ohio State University and a Masters of Divinity from Payne Theological Seminary and is preparing to work on her Doctorate in Ministry at Methodist Theological Schools of Ohio (MTSO).
Dr. Terrance Dean
Dr. Terrance Dean is an Assistant Professor in Black Studies at Denison University. He received his PhD in Religion and African American Diaspora Studies from Vanderbilt University. His research interests include gender, sex, sexuality, Black religion and Homiletics, Rhetoric and Communication, African Diaspora, Black Cultural Studies, James Baldwin, and Afrofuturism. Dean earned his Master’s in Theology from Vanderbilt Divinity School, and, is a John Seigenthaler Journalism Fellow from Vanderbilt University. He is a Tutu Desk Brand Ambassador for the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Foundation, and he also serves on the editorial board for The Columbus Dispatch helping to bring awareness and visibility to marginalized groups of people, particularly people of color.
Dean has served as special guest editor for Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International Volume 9, Issue 2, 2020. The special issue titled, Thirty-Year Retrospective of Black Queer Studies, also includes Dean’s essay, “Don’t Forget About Us: James Baldwin, the Black Church, and Black Queer Identity.” Dean has also served as special guest editor for Black Theology: An International Journal Volume 14, Issue 1, 2016. The special issue titled, Afrofuturism in Black Theology – Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the State of Black Religion in the Black Metropolis also includes Dean’s essay, “Fire This Time: James Baldwin, Futurity, and a Call and Response.”
He is the author of the Essence Magazine best-seller Hiding In Hip Hop - On the Down Low in the Entertainment Industry from Music to Hollywood (Simon & Schuster/Atria Books - May 2008). He is also the author of Reclaim Your Power! A 30-Day Guide to Hope, Healing and Inspiration for Men of Color (Random House/Villard - May 2003); Straight From Your Gay Best Friend – The Straight Up Truth About Relationships, Love, and Having A Fabulous Life (Agate – October 2010); Visible Lives: Three Stories in Tribute to E. Lynn Harris, (Kensington – May 2010). In 2011, Dean made his fiction debut with his novel, MOGUL (Simon & Schuster/Atria Books – June 2011).
Dean has worked in the entertainment industry for over 15 years with heavy hitters such as Spike Lee, Rob Reiner, Keenan Ivory Wayans, and Anjelica Houston. He has worked with television and film production companies such as B.E.T., Savoy Television, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, and Sony Pictures. Dean also worked with MTV Networks for several years helping to produce live award shows and events including MTV Video Music Awards, Movie Awards, Hip Hop Honors, Rock Honors, Sports & Music Festival, and Choose or Lose.
Dean’s lecturing and workshops have been featured at noted institutions such as Brown University, Ohio University, The Ohio State University, Syracuse University, Rutgers University, Long Island University, and New York University.
He is a contributing writer to the anthologies, Souls of My Brothers and Always Too Soon. He has been featured in Newsweek, Time magazine, New York Magazine, The Observer UK, Genre, VIBE, Hip Hop Weekly, Toronto NOW, and Essence magazine. He has also appeared across the country, and internationally, on popular syndicated radio shows – NPR, The BBC, Russ Par, The Michael Eric Dyson Show, The Tom Joyner Morning Show, and The Wendy Williams Experience. He has made national television appearances on Fox’s Red Eye, CNN’s Headline News, NBC 10 Philadelphia, ABC 6 Philadelphia, WB 11 New York, and FOX 2 in Detroit. He has also written for The Columbus Dispatch, VIBE, ESSENCE, Huffington Post, The Advocate, The New York Sun, The Tennessean, Fatherhood Today, and The Michigan Chronicle.
Rev. Dr. Susan K. Williams Smith
Rev. Dr. Susan K. Williams Smith, the founder of Crazy Faith Ministries in Columbus, Ohio, was formerly the senior pastor of Advent United Church of Christ, where she served for 22 years. She graduated from Occidental College in 1976, where she earned her BA in English literature, and is a 1986 graduate of Yale Divinity School, where she earned her M.Div. She earned her D. Min. from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, studying under the late Rev. Drs. Samuel Proctor and Charles E. Booth.
She now serves as a national organizer and trainer for the African American Ministers Leadership Council (AAMLC), a division of People for the American Way, a communications consultant for the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. (SDPC, and also as a co-chair of the Minority Outreach Subcommittee of the Nonpartisan Ohio Voter Outreach Committee (NOVOC).
A former reporter, Rev. Smith worked for newspapers in Baltimore and Texas before entering seminary. She also served as an associate producer for WJZ News, as an on-air news reporter for WEAA, the radio station affiliated with Morgan State University in Baltimore, and as a talk show host for “Columbus Today,” a locally heard radio program in Columbus, and as an on-air political commentator for a news magazine television program, also produced in Columbus.
Following graduation from Yale Divinity School, where she served as the first woman to be president of the student body, Dr. Smith served as associate minister at Trinity United Church of Christ, studying under the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A Wright, Jr. She served at Trinity for three years before accepting the call to be pastor at Advent UCC.
While pastor of Advent United Church of Christ, Rev. Smith concentrated on teaching her members that church is something you do. In addition to outreach ministries to the city’s poor, Rev. Smith’s ministry concentrated on empowering urban youth through an annual summer arts program, which used the arts to instill confidence in those youth who participated. Through arts immersion and concentration as well on reading, writing and math, the camp was successful in helping participating youth to perform better academically during the school year. The church also operated its first Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School in 2012, serving 50 children from all over the city of Columbus.
Rev. Smith also served as minister of music at her church for 20 years, as she also served as pastor, producing what some have called a “professional choir” which, in addition to singing in Africa, was invited to sing for professional productions including a promotional performance of “The Lion King,” “The Chocolate Nutcracker,” and with country singer Lyle Lovett.
Rev. Smith is a past co-president of BREAD, (Building Responsibility, Equity and Dignity), a multi-racial, multi-ethnic social justice organization comprised of over 50 different religious denominations in the city of Columbus. Under her leadership, the organization was instrumental in getting the Ohio Legislature to sign into law a measure which prevented pay day lenders from charging its clients exorbitant interest rates.
She was invited to be a participant in the Oxford Roundtable, an event held at Oxford University in England, where she presented a paper on the tension in America between the United States Constitution and the Holy Bible.
She is a past member of the Board of Directors of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc., a social justice ministry which seeks to empower churches and ministers in urban settings to deal with the problems they face through training, resource development and acquisition, and changing of public policy and is now the secretary of that board. When the SDPC held hearings after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in Washington, D.C., Houston and New Orleans, Rev. Smith served as lead commissioner. Those hearings resulted in a published report entitled, “The Breach,” which was presented to the Congressional Black Caucus. In addition, she was instrumental in completing a report for SDPC on the phenomenon of mass incarceration in the United States, recording the testimony of people and families affected by it in selected cities in different regions of the country.
She was recently appointed to the Board of Directors for the League of Women Voters – Ohio.
She served as one of the initial tri-chairs representing Ohio in the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, and was the past co-president of the Ohio Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights. Late in 2017, she organized a Silent March for Justice in the city of Columbus, which attracted over 500 people from the state of Ohio.
Most recently, she was named the first Gordon G. Cosby Seasoned Voices Fellow by the SpiritHouse Project, an organization which has been on the forefront for social justice for decades. She and the founder/director of SpiritHouse, Ruby Sales, worked on a project to expose the extrajudicial murders of black people in the United States for the purpose of sensitizing people on the pervasiveness of the problem and also to encourage citizens to challenge the controversial “stand your ground” laws and police policies which allow these suspicious deaths to go unchallenged. She has made presentations at conferences across the country, including the Sojourners Summit in Washington, DC. and at the Transatlantic Roundtable on Race and Religion Most recently, she presented a paper at Chautauqua on the failure of the Constitution and the Bible to end racism and was interviewed by veteran journalist Bill Moyers about the subject.
The winner of the Wolcott Preaching Prize while at Yale, she has preached nationally and internationally, and was recently inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. College of Ministers and Laity.
Rev. Smith’s non-profit, Crazy Faith Ministries, aims to unpack and teach the concept of faith in a way which will empower people and enable them to reach far beyond what they believed themselves able to do. She has also formed a “Freedom Choir, devoted to teaching the message of justice through music.
She is the author of six books, Carla and Annie, From Calvary to Victory, Forgive WHO? and, Crazy Faith: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives, and The Book of Jeremiah: The Life and Ministry the work and ministry of Jeremiah Wright. Her most recent book, Rest for the Justice-Seeking Soul, was published by Whitaker House and was released in November 2019. Her latest book, With Liberty and Justice for Some: The Bible, the Constitution, and Racism in the United States was released in October, 2020.
She is a regular contributor to The Dallas Examiner and The Wilmington Journal, and her work has also appeared weekly on The Washington Post and The Huffington Post. She also has her own blog, “Candid Observations,” which concentrates on the intersection of race, politics and religion, and distributes a “Tuesday Meditation” to people nationally and internationally.
She is the mother of two grown children, Caroline, a certified music therapist, and a son, Charles, who is writing and performing music in Ohio.
Rev. Howard W. Wiley
Rev. Howard W. Wiley is an ordained Baptist minister. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Kent State University in Kent, Ohio and his Master of Divinity and Master of Philosophy degrees from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate in Theology, Ethics and the Human Sciences at Chicago Theological Seminary. His areas of concentration are Africana Religious Studies, Theology of Culture, and Critical Theory. The primary focus of his research and writing is the African-American Tradition of Interpreting the Spirituals. A member of the faculty of Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio for ten years, as Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology, he worked alongside the faculty and administration of Payne to establish the seminary as one of the six fully accredited historically Black seminaries in the United States. He laid the foundation for Payne’s curriculum in the field of Systematic Theology and served one year as Interim Dean of Academic Affairs.
As adjunct Professor of Theology, Professor Wiley has taught M.Div. and D.Min. graduate courses, in systematic, liberation, constructive, and public theologies, philosophy, critical cultural and social theories, and Africana religious studies, to students attending Bethany Theological Seminary and Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana; United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio; the Center for African-American Theological Studies in Chicago, Illinois; New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Brunswick, New Jersey; and Methodist Theological School in Delaware, Ohio. He has also organized and conducted workshops, given lectures, and led seminars in undergraduate colleges and universities, and in congregational and community settings that have engaged the interconnecting theological and public policy issues related to racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice.
Over the course of his professional life and through the various periods of his academic preparation, Reverend Wiley has been involved in a wide range of Civil Rights, Human Rights, and Social Justice Movements from the Black Studies Student Movement, Anti-War and Anti-Apartheid Movements to the Movements to Free Political Prisoners, Movements for Black Political Empowerment, and Neighborhood Movements for Housing and the End of Homelessness. At the core of his ministry, teaching, scholarship, and activism is the principal conviction that social transformation goes hand in hand with the transformation of consciousness.