Dr. Kenyatta R. Gilbert to present Heritage Lectures at Hood Seminary

Published 11:44 am Tuesday, February 7, 2017

The Rev. Dr. Kenyatta R. Gilbert will present the annual Bishop Alfred E. and Mrs. Mamie White Endowed Heritage Lecture Series on Friday and Saturday at Hood Theological Seminary.

The lecture series is titled “A Trivocal Hermeneutic for 21st-Century Preaching: Justice, Transformation and Hope.” Lecture 1 will be at 7 p.m. Friday; Lecture 2 will be at 10:10 a.m. Saturday. Both lectures will be in Classroom 315 on the seminary’s Salisbury campus. They are free and open to the public.

Gilbert is associate professor of homiletics at the Howard University School of Divinity. He earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from Baylor University and a master’s in divinity and doctorate in practical theology from Princeton Theological Seminary.

Gilbert specializes in the history, theory and practice of African-American preaching. His research focuses on the theology and rhetoric of prophetic preaching, African-American religion, hermeneutical theory and constructive practical theology.

He is the author of “The Journey and Promise of African-American Preaching(Fortress 2011); “A Pursued Justice: Black Preaching From the Great Migration to Civil Rights(Baylor 2016); and “Exodus Preaching” (Abingdon 2017).

Gilbert received the Louisville Institute’s First Book Grant for Minority Scholars, Howard University’s Emerging Scholar Award and Moorland-Spingarn Research Center’s Andrew Mellon Summer Fellowship. He was faculty collaborator for HUSD’s Equipping the Saints: Promising Practices in Black Congregational Life research project, a three-year national study funded by the Lilly Endowment.

Gilbert is also an ordained Baptist minister and founder of The Preaching Project: Restoring Communities Through Spoken Word (www.thepreachingproject.org), a website ministry that promotes the nurture of the preaching life of ministers serving African-American churches and communities. He has served congregations in Maryland, Texas, New York, New Jersey and Kenya.

Hood Theological Seminary, at 1810 Lutheran Synod Drive, is a graduate and professional school sponsored by the AME Zion Church and approved by the University Senate of the United Methodist Church. Its student body includes people of many denominations.