Currie Lecture to focus on pandemics and Protestant missions

RICHMOND, VA (April 17, 2020) — This year’s Currie Family Lecture is “I Weep Because I Have A Human Heart: Pandemics, Endemic Infections, and Early U.S. Protestant Missions,” with Dr. Erskine Clarke. The Currie Family Lecture began through a gift from Thomas Currie Jr. and is delivered annually through the Seminary’s Charlotte Campus. Dr. Clarke’s lecture will be held over Zoom at 7:00 p.m. on April 28. The lecture can also be seen live on YouTube and Facebook.

Dr. Clarke received his doctorate in 1970 from Union Presbyterian Seminary and is the author of numerous publications on American religious history, including Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic, for which he received Columbia University’s Bancroft Prize for a distinguished work in American history. He is, with Walter Brueggemann, editor of the Journal for Preachers. He completed his doctoral work under the careful direction of Jim Smylie at Union. Click here to download a flyer about Dr. Clarke and the Currie Family Lecture.

Begun through a gift to Union Presbyterian Seminary by Thomas Currie Jr. and delivered annually through the Seminary’s Charlotte campus, the Currie Family Lecture is a regular series in which lectures are presented on the history and mission of the church. Given Currie’s vocational interest in the connection between the church’s historical work and its present mission, the lecture series seeks to explore that link, examining how the past might inform our present and direct us toward a faithful future. The Currie Family Lecture is expanding into the Currie Family Professorship.