[act-ma] TUESDAY: Dr. Gary Dorrien and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

[Cole Harrison]

Dr. Gary Dorrien and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Tuesday, December 10 @ 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm ~ Marsh Chapel, Boston University,
735 Commonwealth Ave.
[image: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights]

Dr. Gary Dorrien at Boston University’s Marsh Chapel to give a talk
surrounding the commemoration of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.  Dorrien
is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological
Seminary in the City of New York and Professor of Religion at Columbia
University, both in New York City, and the author of 18 books on ethics,
social theory, philosophy, theology, politics, and intellectual history.
An Episcopal priest, he is a member of the Democratic Socialists of
America's Religion and Socialism Commission.

Part of the Reading King in Boston Series, supported by Mass Humanities
<https://www.facebook.com/MassHumanities/>

*Program Schedule*

Solo by – George Walters-Sleyon, PhD “The Prayer”

Welcome and Introduction – Boston University School of Theology
<https://www.facebook.com/BUtheology/> Dean Mary Elizabeth Moore

A Hymn for Human Rights Day (December 10):
“You Made Us In Your Image” (by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette)

Invocation – Mr. Kevin Peterson of The New Democracy Coalition
<https://www.facebook.com/newdemocracycoalition/>

Selection by the Seminary Singers:
“Child of God” (composed by Mark A. Miller)

Introduction of the Speaker – George Walters-Sleyon, PhD

Speaker: Gary Dorrien, PhD – “Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King
Jr. and the Rights of Humanity”

Reception of Speaker’s Remarks and Introduction to the Procession
(distributing candles) – Rodney Petersen, PhD

Selection by the Seminary Singers:
“Prayer Chant: We Resist” (composed by Mark A. Miller)

Acknowledgment/Procession outside to surround the King Monument to read the
Litany for the 71st Anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human
Rights – Boston University School of Theology
<https://www.facebook.com/BUtheology/> Associate Dean Teddy Hickman-Maynard

Benediction



=====

Absent from this political season is much reference to the *United
Nations* *Declaration
of Human Rights* – too religious for the political Left and too fraught
with policy implications for the political Right. Professor John Witte
argues in *Christianity and Human Rights* (2012) that a combination of
Jewish, Greek and Roman teachings with the radical teachings of Christ
helped to cultivate the new beliefs of dignity, equality, liberty and
democracy that laid the ground for the human rights paradigm as it would
emerge after 1948. These were themes picked up by the Black Social Gospel
tradition upon which Martin Luther King, Jr., fed and then proclaimed. They
form the bedrock behind his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, illustrated by
Professor Gary Dorrien’s magisterial *Breaking White Supremacy: Martin
Luther King, Jr., and the Black Social Gospel* (2018).

The principles of the Universal Declaration are meaningful when recognized
at the borders, in zones of conflict, and in the intimacies of our
relationships with one another. Harvard Law School’s Martha Minow
illustrates their value in her recent book, *When Should Law Forgive?* (2019):
when among youth – whether child soldiers or among juvenile offenders in
the United States; for those living under student and consumer debt – not
just corporate or sovereign debt in the developing world; and when the
law’s tools of forgiveness, amnesties, and pardons strengthen justice,
peace, and democracy, and do not undermine the law’s promises.

-- 
*"Not one step back"*

Cole Harrison
Executive Director
Massachusetts Peace Action - the Commonwealth's largest grassroots peace
organization
11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138
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617-466-9274 m
www.masspeaceaction.org
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