WINGATE — Religious studies scholar, author and ordained Presbyterian minister Dr. Julia Robinson Moore will be the featured speaker at Wingate’s Baccalaureate on May 16. The 4 p.m. service will be held in the Batte Center’s McGee Theatre.
An associate professor at the University of North Carolina Charlotte since 2005, Moore teaches courses in African American religion, religions of the African Diaspora, and racial violence in America. She has focused her work on the intersections of racism, religion and racial violence within American Protestantism in her self-described quest to “unearth strategies for justice, healing and societal reform.”
Her 2015 book, “Race, Religion, and the Pulpit: Reverend Robert L. Bradby and the Making of Urban Detroit,” explores how Second Baptist Church of Detroit’s 19th minister became the catalyst for economic empowerment, community-building and the formation of an urban African American working class in Detroit.
She has more recently turned her attention to the historical complexities of black and white race relations in Charleston and Charlotte through the lens of American Presbyterianism and another research project which addresses the intersection of lynching and manipulated forms of Christianity in the American South.
Moore has served as an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for more than 25 years including a stint as pastor of Black’s Memorial Presbyterian Church in Monroe. A teaching elder in the Presbytery of Charlotte and in her home church, River Church Charlotte, she co-founded Moore Grace Ministries with her husband, Ricky, who is also a minister. She holds a doctorate in African American history and American religious history from Michigan State University, a master of divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a bachelor’s in history from Alma College. Her son, Kenneth, will graduate from Wingate with a bachelor’s degree in communication on May 17.
Mentorship will remain the theme of Baccalaureate as it has been for the past several years, as graduates are encouraged to take the opportunity to honor those who have helped them in their quest to embody Wingate’s motto of faith, knowledge, service. Faculty and staff mentors will be invited to pick up the mentor medallions and/or mentor coins awarded them by students as well as the accompanying portfolios of tribute in the Batte Center rotunda prior to the service.
Following the service, guests are invited to stay for a reception as refreshments will be offered in the rotunda and outside around the Talley Fountain.