This year’s event, the Walter B. and Kay W. Shurden Symposium on Religious Liberty and Separation of Church and State, will feature two public scholars who bring their unique experiences and expertise to the conversation on religious and racial identity. In partnership with the Berkeley School of Theology and the University of Southern California, the event will be on April 2 in Los Angeles.

Featuring the Rev. Dr. Joseph Evans and the Rev. Dr. Christopher The, the public dialogue will take place at 4 p.m. on the University Park Campus of USC at the University Religious Center's Fishbowl Chapel.

The Rev. Dr. Joseph Evans is the tenured J. Alfred Smith, Sr. Endowed Professor and Chair of Theology in the Public Square and Director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing and Restorative Justice Center at the Berkeley School of Theology. His research interests include Classical and Contemporary Rhetoric and how each informs social movements and liberation theologies and sermon preparation and delivery. An accomplished author of books and scholarly articles, the Rev. Dr. Evans was described as one of the “brilliant preachers of his generation” by the Rev. Dr. Gardner C. Taylor.

The Rev. Dr. Christopher The serves as the director of student research and initiative management for the Association of Theological Schools. A former English Ministry Pastor, the Rev. Dr. The was raised in a Chinese-Indonesian immigrant congregation in the Reformed tradition and later ordained to ministry by a Chinese/Taiwanese church in the Pentecostal tradition. His public scholarship includes works on resourcing immigrant churches for civic engagement, leveraging evaluative principles for character formation in theological education, understanding the unique mentorship needs of doctoral students of color, and surveying the placement of diasporic Indonesian communities among world Christianities. A member of the 2016 class of BJC Fellows, the Rev. Dr. The serves as the secretary of the BJC Board of Directors.

This annual series was established in 2004 with a gift to BJC from Drs. Walter B. and Kay W. Shurden of Macon, Georgia. This BJC event is held at Mercer University in Georgia every three years and at another seminary, college or university in the intermediate years.

For more information, visit BJConline.org/ShurdenLectures.