About the Speakers

Gary Dorrien teaches social ethics, theology and philosophy of religion as the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and professor of religion at Columbia University. He was previously the Parfet Distinguished Professor at Kalamazoo College, where he taught for 18 years and also served as dean of Stetson Chapel and director of the Liberal Arts Colloquium. Professor Dorrien is the author of 19 books and more than 300 articles that range across the fields of social ethics, philosophy, theology, political economics, social and political theory, religious history, cultural criticism and intellectual history. Philosopher Cornel West describes him as “the preeminent social ethicist in North America today.”

Professor Dorrien will speak on the subject of his recent two books on the black social gospel tradition, "The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel" and "Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel."

Lucas Morel is professor of politics and head of the Politics Department at Washington and Lee University. He holds a doctorate in political science from Claremont Graduate University, and previously taught at John Brown University and the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville. Morel also teaches in the master’s program in American history and government at Ashland University in Ohio. He is the author of "Lincoln’s Sacred Effort: Defining Religion’s Role in American Self-Government" and editor of "Lincoln and Liberty: Wisdom for the Ages." He is also editor of "Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope: A Political Companion to 'Invisible Man'" and co-editor of "The New Territory: Ralph Ellison and the Twenty-First Century." He is currently completing a book on Lincoln and the American Founding.

Morel will explore how King's political thought endorsed opposing principles for the advancement of the civil rights of black Americans.

Keith Miller mainly focuses on the rhetoric and songs of the civil rights movement. He is the author of "Martin Luther King's Biblical Epic: His Great, Final Speech" and "Voice of Deliverance: The Language of Martin Luther King Jr., and Its Sources," which was favorably reviewed in The Washington Post and is widely cited. His essays on Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson, Frederick Douglass, C.L. Franklin and Fannie Lou Hamer have appeared in many scholarly collections and in such leading journals as College English, College Composition and Communication, Publication of the Modern Language Association, Rhetoric Society Quarterly and Journal of American History. His essay “Second Isaiah Lands in Washington, D.C.: Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ as Biblical Narrative and Biblical Hermeneutic” was awarded Best Essay of the Year in Rhetoric Review in 2007.

In his talk, Professor Miller, who has devoted much of his career to locating and explaining King’s sources for sermons and speeches, will reveal a hitherto unknown source — a female writer — for a passage in King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”