Elizabethtown College is presenting a workshop, “Divided by Faith: Racial Diversity and Anabaptists Today,” on Thursday, April 16, from 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., in the Young Center’s Bucher Meetinghouse. Sponsored by the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies and the Sociology and Anthropology Department of the college, the workshop features Michael O. Emerson, Ph.D. Emerson is the Allyn and Gladys Cline Professor of Sociology and founding director of the Center on Race, Religion, and Urban Life at Rice University. The workshop is open to the public free of charge.
Emerson will discuss his research on racism among American evangelicals and share his stories and findings from multi-ethnic congregations in the U.S. Also included will be an overview of findings about race and racism from Church Member Profile 2006 (a study of Anabaptists in the U.S.) by Elizabethtown College professors Conrad Kanagy and Jeff Bach, and responses by several Mennonite and Church of the Brethren pastors including Leonard Dow, pastor of Oxford Circle Mennonite Church a Franconia Conference Partner in Mission.
At 7:00 p.m., students in Kanagy’s Sociological Theory course will host an “Author Meets Critics” discussion with Emerson, where they will critique his work and pose questions. This event will also be held in the Bucher Meetinghouse and is open to the public free of charge.
Emerson is the co-author of several books, including the award-winning “Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America” and “People of the Dream: Multiracial Congregations in the United States.” The latter book won the 2007 Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for making the most significant contribution to overcoming racism, awarded by the Racial and Ethnic Minorities section of the American Sociological Association. His most recent books are “Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don’t Give Away More Money” and the forthcoming “Religion Implicated: What Sociology Teaches Us about Religion in Our World.”