Faith in the time of Monsters

Dr. Cornel West is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. Dr. West teaches on the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as courses in Philosophy of Religion, African American Critical Thought, and a wide range of subjects — including but by no means limited to, the classics, philosophy, politics, cultural theory, literature, and music. He has written 20 books and has edited 13. He is best known for his classics, Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and for his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. His most recent book, Black Prophetic Fire, offers an unflinching look at nineteenth and twentieth-century African American leaders and their visionary legacies. Dr. West is a frequent guest on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span and Democracy Now. He has a passion to communicate to a vast variety of publics in order to keep alive the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. – a legacy of telling the truth and bearing witness to love and justice.

Staceyann Chin is the author of the new poetry collection Crossfire: A Litany For Survival, the critically acclaimed memoir The Other Side of Paradise, cowriter and original performer in the Tony Award–winning Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, and author of the one-woman shows Hands Afire, Unspeakable Things, Border/Clash, and MotherStruck. She has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and 60 Minutes, and her poetry has been featured in the New York Times and the Washington Post. Chin has appeared in Off-Broadway one-woman shows and at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. She has also held poetry workshops worldwide. Chin credits her accomplishments to her hard-working grandmother and the pain of her mother’s absence. Chin’s poetry can be found in her first chapbook, Wildcat Woman, the one she now carries on her back, Stories Surrounding My Coming, and numerous anthologies, including Skyscrapers, Taxis and Tampons, Poetry Slam, Role Call, Cultural Studies: Critical Methodologies. Chin’s voice can be heard on CD compilations out of Bar 13- Union Square and Pow Wow productions. In 2009, Chin published her autobiographical novel, The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir. In 2024 she was the subject of Laurie Townshend‘s documentary film A Mother Apart.

Rev. Sekou’s music is an unique combination of Arkansas Delta Blues, Memphis Soul 1970s funk, and Gospel. His performances are one-part protest rally, one-part Pentecostal tent revival, and one-part late night juke joint. AFROPUNK heralded the “deep bone-marrow-level conviction” of his first album, “The Revolution Has Come”. The single, “We Comin’”—was named the new anthem for the modern Civil Rights movement by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “In Times Like These”(2016) was produced the six-time Grammy nominated North Mississippi Allstars, which featured the critically acclaimed ballard, “Loving You Is Killing Me”. In March 2019, Rev. Sekou and the Freedom Fighters released “When We Fight, We Win: Live in Memphis”. Re A consummate entertainer, Paste Studio celebrated his barn-burning performance saying: “Rev. Sekou delivers the spiritual performance we need now.” NPR’s Bob Boilen commented that Rev. Sekou delivered one of “the most rousing Tiny Desk performances”.

Kirsten West Savali is Vice President of Content at iOne Digital, Urban One, Inc.’s family of digital media brands, which together with Radio One and TV One, reaches over 80 percent of Black American households, making it the largest Black-owned multimedia company in the nation. She formerly served as executive producer at ESSENCE Magazine, most recently serving as the magazine’s senior editor of News & Politics. As a writer, cultural critic, and peer-recognized movement journalist who has provided commentary on various networks, including MSNBC and C-Span, her work explores the intersections of racism, justice, Black feminism, and politics—with a particular interest in dismantling narratives and exposing structures that endanger oppressed and occupied communities. The Natchez, Mississippi, native has been a featured panelist and speaker at universities across the country, including Alcorn State University, Harvard University, Rutgers University, and Yale University. She also serves as a faculty member for the African American Policy Forum’s Critical Race Theory Summer School and has worked closely with organizations dedicated to Black maternal health. Kirsten is the recipient of the Vernon Jarrett Medal for Journalistic Excellence which honors exemplary reporting on Black life in America and an NABJ Award for Journalistic Excellence. She was also named to EBONY Magazine’s ‘Power 100’ List and awarded a John Jay College of Criminal Justice/Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellowship for her work focusing on criminal justice, and recognized as one of Houston’s Top 50 Women Leaders by Women We Admire. She has been published in outlets such as Huffington Post, The Grio, EBONY, Al Jazeera, and more. Most importantly, she is the proud mother of three sons, Walker, Dash, and Reid, and considers it the most fulfilling role of her life. 

The Centre for Faith, Art, And Justice, a program of Valley & Mountain UMC, is a “base of bases” where people of different ages, ethnicities, cultures, orientations, socio-economic backgrounds, and religious and spiritual affiliations/practices (or none at all) are called into relationship through a commitment to social justice, organizing, creativity and the arts, skill-building across the life-cycle, and building a just society. Your partnership, collaboration, and funds in this early stage are crucial to develop this Centre; to cultivate a context and an environment that can nurture and inspire the next generation of artists, organizers, faith leaders and faith organizations; those who understand the arts not simply as the pursuit of the aesthetic, but as a vehicle and a means for social, and, often, spiritual, transformation, broadly and deeply construed.