Lectureship
2023 Annual Lectureship
Rev. Dr. Susan Shaw
Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Oregon State University
“Truth and Lies at the Foot of the Cross:
The Church and God’s LGBTQ+ Children”
About the Lecture:
We’ve all heard how everyone’s equal at the foot of the cross. That doesn’t seem to apply to LGBTQ+ people, however, according to many Christians. In fact, the disgust and hatred of LGBTQ+ people among many Christians is so great that they eagerly accept, tell, create, and repeat lies and falsehoods about the queer community and work actively to limit, roll back, and deny civil and human rights to LGBTQ+ people. Surely, however, of all places, the foot of the cross is a place for truths. On the cross, Jesus sided with the marginalized, oppressed, and despised. The resurrection was God’s affirmation of that choice, and, in his “coming out” of the tomb, Jesus offered hope, possibility, love, and welcome. We’ll explore truths and lies at the foot of the cross, drawing from the latest headlines, biological, medical, and social sciences, gender studies, and theological and biblical studies and make a specific case for Baptist welcome of God’s LGBTQ+ children.
About Dr. Shaw:
“I began working at Oregon State University in 1996. My background is in religious studies, which I taught at two liberal arts colleges before joining the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Oregon State University. While I’ve done research in women and HIV/AIDS and women and rock ‘n’ roll, my current research interests are in feminist studies in religion. My most recent book is Reflective Faith: A Theological Toolbox for Women, a book and workbook that make feminist theology and feminist biblical criticism accessible for a general audience. I am also working on a new book on intersectional theology with Dr. Grace Ji-Sun Kim of Earlham School of Religion. I’m the general editor of a new encyclopedia of women’s lives worldwide and a co-PI on an NSF ADVANCE Institutional Transformation grant that seeks to improve recruiting, hiring, retaining, and advancing women in STEM and social and behavioral sciences at OSU. I’m also the co-author and co-editor with Dr. Janet Lee of Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. The seventh edition is in the works with Oxford University Press. And finally, I blog for Huffington Post on issues of social difference, social justice, religious liberty.
I teach classes in Feminism and the Bible, Global Feminist Theologies, Feminist Theologies in the US, and Feminist Teaching and Learning. I’ve also recently co-led short term study abroad courses in Guatemala (“Women in Resistance”), Spain (“Spiritual Pilgrimages in Spain”), and the UK (“Feminist London”). I also led a semester-long program on Gender, Race, and Class in London during Fall 2016.”
Date and Time:
Monday, September 11, 2023, 6:30PM CT
A 50th Anniversary Reception, featuring cake, will follow the lecture.
Venue:
Wilshire Baptist Church
4316 Abrams Rd.
Dallas, TX 75214
A recording will be available. No registration required to access the recording.
This Year's Lecture Sponsors
Student tickets are free this year thanks to the sponsorship of Ring Lake Ranch, Baptist Women in Ministry, Brite Divinity School, Good Faith Media, and Kardia House.
Senior tickets are free this year thanks to the sponsorship of Coalition for Aging LGBT - Texas.
Meredith Stone
Lynn Brinkley
Anonymous Sponsors
Underwriting the AWAB Lectureship
- You can provide free entry for students, young adults, ministers, clergy, and chaplains.
- You can buy a drink for someone at our after party.
- You can provide funds to cover our next lecturer (to be announced!)
- You can let us decide how the funds are most needed.
- Or you can write your own idea.
Previous Lectures:
2022 Lecture: Rev. Dr. Cody Sanders
STRENGTHEN WHAT REMAINS: QUEER APOCALYPTIC HOPE
Monday, September 26th, 2022 6:30 PM
at St. Luke’s Missionary Baptist Church
1600 Norris Ave., Charlotte, North Carolina
Lecturer: Rev. Dr. Cody Sanders
The age in which we are living and dying is one of myriad endings and edges. The planetary climate, the political climate, the composition of our everyday lives and communities are all filled with possibility and peril. Christian faith traditions hold a resource of visionary potential for living at the edges of life and the endings of the world as we know it: apocalyptic imagination. This lecture will explore the potential of holding together three concepts – queer, apocalyptic, hope – known to cause trouble and provoke revolutionary imagination, asking: What potential does queer apocalyptic hope offer to faith communities to awaken us from our captivity to the status quo, sustain us in cultivating communities of compassion and justice, and nurture our capacity to “strengthen what remains and is on the point of death” (Rev. 3:2).