Category: Lectures

Join us on Thursday, May 8th, at 6pm in the Fellowship Hall at First United Methodist Church, 420 N Nevada Ave, Colorado Springs, CO 80903, for a lecture by Lucia Hulsether, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College.

Hulsether will discuss her book Capitalist Humanitarianism which blends historical and ethnographic styles to study social investment strategies from Christian fair traders to luxury social entrepreneurship conferences, from US finance offices to Guatemalan towns flooded with their loan products, from service economy desperation to the internal contradictions of social movements. Hulsether argues that capitalist humanitarian projects are fueled as much by a profit motive as by a hope that racial capitalism can redeem the losses that accumulate in its wake.

The event is free and open to the public. Doors open at 5:30pm, and a public Q&A will follow the lecture.

Join us on Wednesday, April 23rd, at 6pm in the Heller Center for Arts & Humanities, 1250 N Campus Heights, for a lecture by Aaron Griffith, Assistant Professor of American Church History at Duke Divinity School.

Griffith will discuss his work on how Evangelicals shaped, and were shaped by, the American criminal justice system, the subject of his book God’s Law & Order: The Politics of Punishment in Evangelical America, winner of the 2022 “Best Book in History & Biography” award from Christianity Today.

The event is free and open to the public. Doors open at 5:30pm, and a public Q&A will follow the lecture.

The Center for the Study of Evangelicalism is excited to host Sarah McCammon, National Political Correspondent for NPR & Co-Host of the NPR Politics Podcast, to discuss her book The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church on Thursday, April the 10th, 2025 in Shove Memorial Chapel, 1010 North Nevada Avenue. This lecture is being generously co-hosted by the Colorado College Chaplain’s Office.

Doors open at 5:30pm, and the lecture starts at 6pm. There will be a public Q&A and a book signing after the event. The event is free and open to the public.

McCammon’s work focuses on political, social, & cultural divides in America, including abortion policy and the intersections of politics and religion. She has covered several presidential elections, including the 2016 campaign, when she reported on the rise of the Trump movement, divisions within the Republican Party over its future, and the role of religion in those debates.

For inquiries about the event, contact Ben Slightom, [email protected].

Join the Center for the Study of Evangelicalism on Monday, February the 17th, 2025 in First Congregational Church, 20 East St. Vrain Street, for a lecture from Todne Thomas, Associate Professor of Divinity and Religious Studies at Yale University.

Doors open at 5:30pm, and the lecture starts at 6pm. There will be a public Q&A and a book signing after the event. The event is free and open to the public.

Thomas’s ethnographic research explores the racial, spatial & familial dynamics of Black Christian communities to explore intersectional constructions of power and critical forms of consciousness that attend “the sacred.” Author of Kincraft: The Making of Black Evangelical Sociality, Thomas is completing a forthcoming book From Hate to Hallows: Re-Framing Black Church Arson.

For inquiries about the event, contact Ben Slightom, [email protected].

Join the Center for the Study of Evangelicalism on Friday, February the 7th, 2025 in All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church for a discussion of Christopher W. Hunt’s new book, Jimmy’s Faith: James Baldwin, Disidentification, and the Queer Possibilities of Black Religion.

Doors open at 5:30pm, and the lecture starts at 6pm. There will be a public Q&A and a book signing after the event. The event is free and open to the public.

Christopher W. Hunt is Assistant Professor of Religion at Colorado College, and received his PhD from the Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Hunt’s work considers the relevance and meaning of Black religion for those on the margins or considered outside of traditional religious spaces.

For inquiries about the event, contact Ben Slightom, [email protected].

Join the Center for the Study of Evangelicalism on Thursday, December 12th, at 4:30 PM in University Center 307 for a lecture from S.N. Nyeck, Associate Prof. of Ethnic Studies at CU Boulder.

Abstract: Black Panther, a film directed by Ryan Coogler, has been hailed for its afro-futuristic expressions. It put a different kind of blackness on the big screen worldwide. The amazing technology of Wakanda is unmatched by any other nation. Technological success, however, hides an upending family drama which pits two heirs of the throne against each other. Kind T’Challa against Erik Killmonger. Until he arrived, the existence of Killmonger was a well-guarded secret only the ancestors knew. When Killmonger irrupts in Wakanda, it is to claim the throne and, in the process, destroy the cultural memory that nurtured the imaginary city: the heart-shaped herb that governs life and death flows in Wakanda. While Black Panther has received many reviews, the cataphatic role of religion in the film has not been noted. What does it mean to predicate one’s identity on the death of the sublime? The presentation proposes an alternative ethics affirms Blackness in ways that refashion the self without sacrificing the soul of the folks.