Is America Possible?

Dear Friends,

We’re sending out this special edition of the Pause to let you know about an event at the historic Riverside Church in New York City in coming weeks.

On Saturday, April 4, I will be interviewing Michelle Alexander together with my longtime On Being colleague, teacher, and friend Lucas Johnson. Both of them were students of Vincent Harding, the singularly wise and delightful civil rights leader and elder. My conversation with him in 2011 became one of our most loved shows, and it holds wisdom that is with me again in these times. He led the Mennonite House in Atlanta and helped incubate the philosophy and strategy of nonviolence. He also helped write the speech Martin Luther King Jr. delivered which addressed the Vietnam War and the larger context of citizenship, the realities of war, and moral vision.

Vincent had an operating question that we circled around in our conversation: Is America possible? This is also the title of the event at Riverside, which will be held 59 years to the day of King’s original speech there. There are no tickets for this event, and there’s plenty of room. So if you are in the New York area, I warmly invite you to join us. It begins at 3 p.m. (doors open at 2:30 p.m.), with a dramatic reading of the speech by some surprise guests before our three-way conversation.

This event is sponsored in part by the historic Union Theological Seminary. I’m also happy to share that I am in residence at Union this year, serving as a kind of public theologian in residence and the Founding Fellow of a five-year project called Into the Crowd, which will connect beloved Christian leaders and visionary storytellers towards the healing of our world.

I’d draw your attention to the fact that Dr. King, in this speech, referenced two other beloved teachers from the On Being archive — Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who taught at Jewish Theological Seminary across the street from Union, and the Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh. I commend both of those episodes for relistening in this time too.

It would be wonderful to have you with us!