Judson University to host virtual series on race and justice

 

By Tom Siebert

To celebrate Black History Month and emphasize the importance of diversity at Judson University, the Christian college is hosting a virtual series on race and justice.

“Judson University brings together students of various backgrounds in a Christ-centered and biblically based community,” said Mary Dulabaum, the school’s director of marketing and communications.

“With a commitment to diversity and social engagement, the Race and Justice Series is one way for Judson’s chapel to engage current issues of race relations in light of the gospel,” she added.

Sponsored by the Christian college’s chapel ministry, the three-day series begins at 10 a.m. on Feb. 19 and features Rondell Trevino of the Immigration Coalition. Mr. Trevino became an expert on immigration issues when he sought to have his wife Laura immigrate from El Salvador after she had studied for a year in Memphis.

He worked as a pastoral resident at Fellowship Memphis Church and then at the Evangelical Immigration Table and National Immigration Forum, where he trained churches, businesses, and law enforcement on immigration from a Biblical perspective throughout the Southeast.

The Immigration Coalition, launched in 2017 in partnership with churches, organizations, and people of good will around the United States, is a nonprofit organization providing clean drinking water to Latino, immigrant, and migrant communities along the U.S.-Mexico Border.

The Judson series is slated to resume at 10 a.m. on Feb. 22 with Pastor Peter Hong of New Community Church Chicago, a multi-ethnic urban congregation in Chicago.

He arrived in the U.S. at the age of ten and later earned masters of divinity and theology from Trinity International University. Pastor Hong planted New Community in 2002, partnering with the Evangelical Covenant Church.

The final segment of the series will start at 10 a.m. on Feb. 25 and feature Judson alumnus and author Edward Gilbreath, who will explore “The Relevance of MLK’s Message in 2021.”

Mr. Gilbreath, a 1992 graduate of the university, is an award-winning journalist and currently serves as an executive editor at InterVarsity Press. His books include Reconciliation Blues: A Black Evangelical's Inside View of White Christianity and Birmingham Revolution: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Epic Challenge to the Church.

He also served as executive director of communications for the Evangelical Covenant Church, editor of numerous magazines at Christianity Today, founding editor of Urban Ministries Inc.’s UrbanFaith.com, and vice president of strategic partnerships at Christianity Today.

For more information about the series, visit http://www.judsonu.edu/chapel/. Chapels shared virtually within the Judson community can be viewed at https://bit.ly/3jDHv2F.

Judson is a fully accredited, private Christian institution representing the Church at work in higher education. Nestled along the Fox River in Elgin, Judson is home to more than 1,250 students from 41 states and 20 countries.

The university offers degrees in more than 65 different majors and minors for traditional, graduate, and adult students, ranking consistently among the best regional universities in the Midwest by U.S. News & World Report. It has also been recognized as a “Christian College of Distinction.”