Dr. Glenn Bracey spoke as the keynote speaker for the seventh annual Embrace Conference. Dr. Bracey is a sociology professor at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. He specializes in the relationship between race and religion. During the week that Dr. Bracey was at Asbury, he shared his personal experiences and how it has influenced his research.
The Embrace Conference is a dedicated week that focuses on racial reconciliation from a biblical and Wesleyan perspective. In the past, the conference has explored views on social justice and racial division. The conference is sponsored through Asbury’s Office of Intercultural Affairs. The Rev. Dr. Esther Jadhav leads this office and administers the conference. This year, the conference totaled an attendance of 326 students, not including chapel.
Rev. Dr. Jadhav shared that the conference defines itself through “hospitality, mutuality, redemptive social action and grace-filled reconciliation.” These are the themes that the conference plans to root itself in each year as an opportunity for each person to participate in the racial reconciliation discussion. Rev. Dr. Jadhav shared that the conference hopes to highlight and explore topics that are challenging and frequently left out. She also hopes to bring these topics into context of familiarity and the daily life of the Asbury community. Rev. Dr. Jadhav shares her hope for the continuance of the conference. “We hope it continues to be an opportunity for students, faculty and staff to come together and learn from scholars and practitioners in the field.”
This year the conference focused on hospitality as a means of reconciliation. The importance of this hospitality is to show the culture of the Kingdom and how it is meant to challenge us and draw us closer to each other and to God. Dr. Bracey spent his time at Asbury showing the condition of the church and the race relations in it.
On Tuesday, Nov. 12, Dr. Bracey presented a lecture entitled “Biblical Hospitality: The State of Race in the Church.” He began with his research on how scripture has influenced the members of the churches he surveyed. By asking them a series of questions that were biblically backed, the survey began to show a specific set of people have almost formed a new religion under the name of Christianity. Dr. Bracey calls this religion the “Religion of Whiteness.” This looks like a white monocultural church centering itself around a perverted version of God, one who has “blessed” white people and prefers to keep their legal, cultural and economic power over other people and the earth.
Throughout his time at Asbury, Dr. Bracey highlighted the importance of every person having a voice at the table. The variance in voices is important so that each person can be better equipped for conversations in the future. Dr. Bracey focused on the importance of cultural competency as a way to inform and assist the church’s hospitality to those of differing backgrounds. He hopes that his work, research, scholarship and service benefit God’s church and His people.
