Ware Lecture, featuring Melissa Harris-Lacewell

General Assembly 2009 Event 4083

“Faith and Reason” (PDF, 10 pages)

Melissa Harris-Lacewell

Melissa Harris-Lacewell is Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of the award-winning book, Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought, (Princeton 2004). And she is currently at work on a new book: Sister Citizen: A Text For Colored Girls Who've Considered Politics When Being Strong Wasn't Enough. Her academic research is inspired by a desire to investigate the challenges facing contemporary black Americans and to better understand the multiple, creative ways that African Americans respond to these challenges.

Faith and Reason: Race, Justice, and American Political Life

Melissa Harris-Lacewell challenged us to pause in the moment of American racial transformation and ask about how faith and reason can guide our politics toward more just ends. We Americans do use religious and rational justifications for democratic processes, policy directions, and political goals. In fact, in many ways the American state is the God figure in our nation's civic religion. But the realities of black life in America have historically served to challenge the American project in both moral and secular realms.

From the General Assembly Live-Bloggers

• 2009 Ware Lecture