EVENT
Christopher Carter to deliver dinner lecture
Soul food has played a critical role in preserving Black history, community and culinary genius. It is also a response to – and marker of – centuries of food injustice. Given the harm that our food production system inflicts upon Black people, what should soul food look like today?
Author and theologian Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter will address the question with his dinner lecture, “The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice,” at Methodist Theological School in Ohio, 3081 Columbus Pike in Delaware. The evening begins in Dunn Dining Hall at 5 p.m. Feb. 6 with a buffet dinner featuring food from MTSO’s Seminary Hill Farm. Carter’s lecture follows at 5:30.
A registration charge of $15 covers dinner and the lecture. MTSO students may register for free.
The lecture will be streamed live via Zoom at no cost to those tuning in. Advance registration is required and available here.
Carter’s talk merges a history of Black American foodways with a Christian ethical response to food injustice. He reveals how racism and colonialism have long steered the development of U.S. food policy. The very food we grow, distribute, and eat disproportionately harms Black people specifically and people of color among the global poor in general.
In this lecture, Carter reflects on how people of color and those in solidarity with them can eat in a way that reflects their cultural identities while remaining true to the principles of compassion, love, justice, and solidarity with the marginalized.
Carter’s research, teaching and activist interests are in Black, womanist and environmental ethics, with a particular focus on race, food and nonhuman animals. His publications include The Spirit of Soul; “Blood in the Soil: The Racial, Racist, and Religious Dimensions of Environmentalism” in The Bloomsbury Handbook on Religion and Nature; and the co-edited volume The Future of Meat Without Animals. In them, he explores the intersectional oppressions experienced by people of color, non-human nature, and animals.
Carter serves as associate professor of theology at the University of San Diego and lead pastor of The Loft at Westwood United Methodist Church. He also serves on the board of directors of Farm Forward, an anti-factory farming nonprofit.
Methodist Theological School in Ohio provides theological education and leadership in pursuit of a just, sustainable and generative world. In addition to the Master of Divinity degree, the school offers master’s degrees in practical theology, social justice and theological studies, along with a Doctor of Ministry degree.
CONTACT:
Danny Russell, communications director
drussell@mtso.edu, 740-362-3322