Learn More About Special Guests at Convention
We are delighted to have Sophfronia Scott and The Very Rev. Michael Battle with us for Convention this year. Along with the descriptions of these special guests, we have added a special reading recommendation from each, selecting one of their own works. Both selections will be available at the Gifts of Grace Bookstore at Grace Church Cathedral, as well as at the links below. Books will be available for purchase and signing at Convention.
About Sophronia Scott
Sophfronia Scott, our keynote speaker, grew up in Lorain, Ohio, a hometown she shares with author Toni Morrison. She began her career as an award-winning magazine journalist for “Time” magazine, where she co-authored the groundbreaking cover story “Twentysomething,” the first study identifying the demographic group known as Generation X. Scott was nominated as Best New Author at the African American Literary Awards for her first novel, All I Need to Get By, and hailed by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. as “potentially one of the best writers of her generation.” She is the author of The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton, Unforgivable Love, Love’s Long Line, and This Child of Faith: Raising a Spiritual Child in a Secular World, co-written with her son Tain, a survivor of the Sandy Hook shooting. Her latest novel is Wild, Beautiful, and Free.
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Reading Recommendations
Sophfronia Scott, our keynote speaker, has selected her latest novel, Wild, Beautiful, and Free. The book tells the story of Jeannette, the mixed-race daughter of a plantation owner and an enslaved woman, who escapes slavery in the years before the Civil War. Her mission to build a life of her own takes her across the country. Scott descibed the heart of the story: "In a world that tells her she doesn’t fit anywhere, Jeannette must decide what’s more important: bending to the expectations of others or embracing her true self."
Scott, Wild, Beautiful, and Free: https://sophfronia.com/publication-items/wild-beautiful-and-free/?portfolioCats=320%2C318%2C319%2C317 |
About the Very Rev. Michael Battle |
Reading Recommendation |
Our Convention preacher, The Very Rev. Michael Battle, Ph.D., currently serves as the Herbert Thompson Professor of Church and Society and Director of the Desmond Tutu Center at General Theological Seminary in New York. His vocation has been especially linked to the ministry of Archbishop Tutu, who ordained him to the priesthood, officiated his marriage, and baptized his children. His 11 books include Desmond Tutu: A Spiritual Biography of South Africa’s Confessor; Blessed are the Peacemakers: A Christian Spirituality of Nonviolence; and Practicing Reconciliation in a Violent World.
A beloved spiritual guide to seminarians and the CREDO conference, Battle has served as chaplain to Archbishop Tutu, the House of Bishops, the Lambeth Conference, and Congressman John Lewis. In 2010, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, named Battle as one of the Six Preachers of Canterbury Cathedral, an honorary appointment with an unbroken succession dating back to its foundation by Thomas Cranmer at the time of the English Reformation. |
Our Convention preacher, The Very Rev. Michael Battle, Ph.D., chose one of his earlier works to recommend to the Diocese, Ubuntu: I in You and You in Me. The concept of Ubuntu, so central the life and work of Archbishop Tutu, locates our selfhood in the experience of shared community. Battle imagines the believer's experience as participation in the common life of the Trinity, and he proposes ubuntu's emphasis on kinship and interdependency as a corrective to Western individualism and competitiveness.
Battle, Ubuntu: I in You and You in Me: https://www.michaelbattle.com/books/p/ubuntu-i-in-you-and-you-in-me |