Dr. David Daniels III (left) and Dr. Cecil M. Robeck (right) lectured in the William J. Seymour Chapel at AGTS. Dr. Charles W. McKinney (center), member of the AGTS Board of Directors, moderated a faculty forum.

On March 9, AGTS sponsored the Martin Luther King Jr. and William J. Seymour Leadership Forum with a grant from the Louisville Institute. The forum used the lives of King and Seymour as lenses through which to understand the religious and social aspects of the church’s leadership in society.

Dr. David Daniels III, professor of church history at McCormick Theological Seminary, lectured about King and Seymour as spiritual leaders of the twentieth century, declaring them to be champions of social justice, bringing “blacks and whites” together in racial harmony and offering alternatives to segregation.

Dr. Cecil M. Robeck, professor of church history at Fuller Theological Seminary, focused on Seymour as a model of Pentecostal leadership by stating, “He encouraged every member of his congregation to minister, regardless of their race, class, gender or age. He demonstrated the value of racial unity and cultural harmony.”

Dr. Robeck addressed the topic further at the faculty forum, “We are quite good [at framing our relationship to God] on the personal, vertical level. What we [must] ask is, ‘What is our relationship to our brothers and sisters?’ The problem is, we often talk about social issues in the way they look to me. We need to ask the question, ‘What does this look like to my brothers and sisters who are not in the same group that I’m in, or the same color that I am, or the same gender that I am…how will my actions affect them?’”

Visit www.agts.edu/king_seymour to listen to these lectures and the faculty forum.