The best part was Fred D. Gray.
There were many other highlights: music, friends, architecture, and scholarly papers, of course. But the best was the one hour story told by the 95-year-old black man who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom less than one year ago.
He was a young 24-year-old attorney in Montgomery, Alabama, when his friend and colleague was arrested for not giving up her seat on the bus. Rosa Parks was her name, and she became famous. But it was Fred D. Gray the attorney and Martin Luther King Jr. the preacher who took up her cause and guided the bus boycott that changed the country.
Mr. Gray told us all about it, and also about how he got into college in the first place, in Tennessee, and later into law school, in Ohio.
He was here because he is a lifelong member of the Church of Christ, and who knew that there were (and are) black Churches of Christ. I knew some things about these Christians only because I grew up in west Kentucky where this type of Christian is plentiful. We Baptists were sure those Church of Christ folk were bound for hell because they depended upon baptism as central to their salvation; and they were sure we Baptists were hell bound because we omitted baptism from the redemption equation. The only thing we agreed on was those Catholics, grouped together into one lone church on the edge of town. They for sure had no hope of eternity for, well, lots of reasons.
It was these same Church of Christ people who were hosting this conference. But no, it wasn’t the same folk. Something had changed. They had a breakout session about it, about the emergence of these congregations from their religious and cultural isolation into a flow much nearer to the mainstream of the Christian community in the United States.
Other topics included the church and the academy, the lingering influence of C. S. Lewis, civil rights, the transformation of historiography in the Church of Christ movement, and business and economics. A keynote address was given by Yale scholar Willie J. Jennings, entitled “Finding One Chord: Belonging as the Heart of Democracy.” I need to draw attention to the formal name of this annual, endowed address: “Fred D. Gray Plenary Address in Human and Civil Rights.”
One stream of presentations came under the title Arts & Spirituality. These breakout sessions produced papers and talks about aesthetics, poetry, and music; and that is where I found my place, with a presentation with the title, yes, “The Gospel and John Prine.” You can read it here. Thanks, Nancy Posey (Lipscomb University) and Micki Pully-King (Southeast Missouri State University) for being my partners in this splendid adventure.
The final lecture, in the Great Hall, was delivered by world-renown scholar of Christian origins N. T. Wright, he with the Oxford DPhil and 88 books to his credit. He spoke on “Defending the Gospel, Challenging the Culture: Urgent Lessons from Paul’s Speech in Athens” based on Acts of the Apostles chapter 17, I was sitting of the front row, but could not understand all he said. But I did take away this clarification: when Paul said to the Athenians “God has set a day for judging the world with justice …” he was not speaking primarily of the condemnation of the wicked but of the responsibility of a righteous judge to set everything in order, to straighten out the social and moral mess that accompanies human life on planet earth. It came near the end, and it was worth the wait.
The whole event is sponsored by Lipscomb University in Nashville, and attendees came mostly from the Church of Christ network of colleges, universities, and seminaries. Normally, more than 500 scholars attend, but not this year; the venue could only accommodate 350, and because the newest building on the compound was, indeed, new, it did not receive clearance from city inspectors until 72 hours before check-in.
It passed all our inspections, though, with flying colors, because two buildings were designed and constructed to resemble a college at Oxford University, including the Great Hall where important Harry Potter scenes were filmed. A third building, the Stone Chapel, was inspired by the archeological remains of a sixth century Christian worship center in what is now Turkey.
All of this is the brainchild of successful Houston attorney Mark Lanier. He made his money in product liability law, and has spent a big hunk of it building this fabulous compound called the Lanier Theological Library. Thank God for wealthy, generous people.
What a week, my surprising reintroduction to the people called Church of Christ. Even at that, one thing remained the same: the music. Each morning we gathered in the chapel for 30 minutes of congregational singing— acapella! It was heavenly.
Next year in Nashville.
The best part was Fred D. Gray.
There were many other highlights: music, friends, architecture, and scholarly papers, of course. But the best was the one hour story told by the 95-year-old black man who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom less than one year ago.
He was a young 24-year-old attorney in Montgomery, Alabama, when his friend and colleague was arrested for not giving up her seat on the bus. Rosa Parks was her name, and she became famous. But it was Fred D. Gray the attorney and Martin Luther King Jr. the preacher who took up her cause and guided the bus boycott that changed the country.
Mr. Gray told us all about it, and also about how he got into college in the first place, in Tennessee, and later into law school, in Ohio.
He was here because he is a lifelong member of the Church of Christ, and who knew that there were (and are) black Churches of Christ. I knew some things about these Christians only because I grew up in west Kentucky where this type of Christian is plentiful. We Baptists were sure those Church of Christ folk were bound for hell because they depended upon baptism as central to their salvation; and they were sure we Baptists were hell bound because we omitted baptism from the redemption equation. The only thing we agreed on was those Catholics, grouped together into one lone church on the edge of town. They for sure had no hope of eternity for, well, lots of reasons.
It was these same Church of Christ people who were hosting this conference. But no, it wasn’t the same folk. Something had changed. They had a breakout session about it, about the emergence of these congregations from their religious and cultural isolation into a flow much nearer to the mainstream of the Christian community in the United States.
Other topics included the church and the academy, the lingering influence of C. S. Lewis, civil rights, the transformation of historiography in the Church of Christ movement, and business and economics. A keynote address was given by Yale scholar Willie J. Jennings, entitled “Finding One Chord: Belonging as the Heart of Democracy.” I need to draw attention to the formal name of this annual, endowed address: “Fred D. Gray Plenary Address in Human and Civil Rights.”
One stream of presentations came under the title Arts & Spirituality. These breakout sessions produced papers and talks about aesthetics, poetry, and music; and that is where I found my place, with a presentation with the title, yes, “The Gospel and John Prine.” You can read it here. Thanks, Nancy Posey (Lipscomb University) and Micki Pully-King (Southeast Missouri State University) for being my partners in this splendid adventure.
The final lecture, in the Great Hall, was delivered by world-renown scholar of Christian origins N. T. Wright, he with the Oxford DPhil and 88 books to his credit. He spoke on “Defending the Gospel, Challenging the Culture: Urgent Lessons from Paul’s Speech in Athens” based on Acts of the Apostles chapter 17, I was sitting of the front row, but could not understand all he said. But I did take away this clarification: when Paul said to the Athenians “God has set a day for judging the world with justice …” he was not speaking primarily of the condemnation of the wicked but of the responsibility of a righteous judge to set everything in order, to straighten out the social and moral mess that accompanies human life on planet earth. It came near the end, and it was worth the wait.
The whole event is sponsored by Lipscomb University in Nashville, and attendees came mostly from the Church of Christ network of colleges, universities, and seminaries. Normally, more than 500 scholars attend, but not this year; the venue could only accommodate 350, and because the newest building on the compound was, indeed, new, it did not receive clearance from city inspectors until 72 hours before check-in.
It passed all our inspections, though, with flying colors, because two buildings were designed and constructed to resemble a college at Oxford University, including the Great Hall where important Harry Potter scenes were filmed. A third building, the Stone Chapel, was inspired by the archeological remains of a sixth century Christian worship center in what is now Turkey.
All of this is the brainchild of successful Houston attorney Mark Lanier. He made his money in product liability law, and has spent a big hunk of it building this fabulous compound called the Lanier Theological Library. Thank God for wealthy, generous people.
What a week, my surprising reintroduction to the people called Church of Christ. Even at that, one thing remained the same: the music. Each morning we gathered in the chapel for 30 minutes of congregational singing— acapella! It was heavenly.
Next year in Nashville.
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