It is once again time for the annual Asbury University Embrace Conference. This year’s conference will explore themes of hospitality and racial reconciliation and is sponsored by Student Intercultural Programs. According to the Asbury University website, “The Embrace Conference focuses on engaging racial reconciliation through a Wesleyan Theological understanding. Each year we discuss how we can participate in creating hospitality, mutuality, redemptive social action and grace-filled reconciliation.”
Kourtney Kawata, Vice President of Student Intercultural Programs, added that this conference will center around how we “acknowledge and reconcile with racism in the past from a Christian worldview within a modern context as well.” Kawata added that the conference will center around questions like “Why is it important as Christians that we reconcile racism from the past, present and future”.
This year’s keynote speaker is Dr. Glenn Brace. As Assistant Professor at Villanova University, his work specializes in race, religion and social movements. He has been published in many academic journals and most recently co-wrote a book entitled “The Religion of Whiteness: How Racism Distorts Christian Faith.”
The conference will begin with an employee session in Kinlaw Board room from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 12. That same afternoon, students and faculty will have the opportunity to attend a plenary session followed by a Q&A in the Shaw CLC auditorium. Later that night, from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., students and faculty will have the opportunity to attend an Asbury University faculty panel with Dr. Bracey in the Shaw CLC auditorium.
On Wednesday, Nov. 13, Dr. Bracey will speak in chapel at 10 a.m. followed by a talkback in Dougherty Dining Room at 12 p.m.
The Embrace Conference is a time for Asbury University students to ponder what it means to seek racial reconciliation, in keeping with the knowledge that we, each of us, are made in the image of God.
