Biblical scholar to officiate convocation
Emmanuel Baptist Church’s Christian Convocation will be on Saturday, Oct. 6 at 9 a.m. with the Rev. Dr. Obery Hendricks as the guest speaker. A continental breakfast will be served at 8:30 a.m. Dr. Hendricks will return as the guest speaker for the 10 a.m. morning worship service on Oct. 7.
For more information, please contact the church office at (336) 788-7023. The Rev. Dr. John Mendez is the senior pastor of Emmanuel, located at 1075 Shalimar Drive.
Dr. Hendricks, a life-long social activist, is one of the foremost commentators on the intersection of religion and political economy in America, Emmanuel Baptist says in a press release. The ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church is the most widely read and perhaps the most influential African-American biblical scholar writing today.
A widely sought lecturer and media spokesperson, Dr. Hendricks’ appearances include CNN, CBS, Fox News, Fox Business News, the Discovery Channel, PBS, BBC, NHK Japan Television and the Bloomberg Network. He has provided running event commentary for National Public Radio, MSNBC, and the al-Jazeera and Aspire international television networks. He has been a member of the Faith Advisory Council of the Democratic National Committee, for whom he delivered the closing benediction at the 2008 Democratic Convention; served on the National Religious Leaders Advisory Committee of the 2008 Democratic Presidential campaign and served in the Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group at the U.S. Department of State under Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.
The Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation has called his work “the boldest post-colonial writing ever seen in Western biblical studies.” Dr. Hendricks’ bestselling book, “The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted” (Doubleday, 2006), was declared “essential reading for Americans” by the Washington Post. The “Politics of Jesus” was the featured subject of the 90-minute C-SPAN special hosted by the Center for American Progress, “Class, Politics and Christianity.” Former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, former Gov. Howard Dean, has pronounced his most recent book, “The Universe Bends Toward Justice: Radical Reflections on the Bible, the Church and the Body Politic” (Orbis, 2011), a “tour de force.”
Hendricks holds the Master of Divinity with academic honors from Princeton Theological Seminary, and both the M.A. and Ph.D. in Religions of Late Antiquity from Princeton University.
A former Wall Street investment executive and past president of Payne Theological Seminary, the oldest African American theological seminary in the United States, Dr. Hendricks is currently a visiting scholar at Columbia University in the Department of Religion and the Institute for Research in African American Studies; a visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary, and emeritus professor of Biblical Interpretation at New York Theological Seminary.
