Sam Sharpe lecture focus on reparations 

The subject of reparations for slavery is the focus of the eighth Sam Sharpe Lecture, which will be delivered by Jamaican academic Professor Verene Shepherd

Professor Shepherd (pictured) specialises in Jamaican social history and diaspora studies. She is the Professor of Social History at the University of the West Indies in Mona and Director of the University’s Institute for Gender and Development Studies, and is an advocate of reparations for slavery. In 2016 she was appointed appointed co-chair of Jamaica's National Council on Reparations.

Due to the lectures' increasing popularity, and the world-renowned speaker, this year’s Sam Sharpe Lecture is taking place in two venues for the first time. The first will be held at Imperial College in London on 22 October, while the second will be delivered at BMS Birmingham in Birmingham on 24 October.

The Sam Sharpe lectures seek to broaden and advance the legacy of Sam Sharpe, a Baptist deacon and enslaved person who played an important role in the ‘Great Jamaican Slave Revolt’ of 1831-2, by exploring subjects in mission, race, class, and injustice. Last year’s speaker was the Revd Dr Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons, and the new Bishop of Dover.

In London, the former Metropolitan Police Superintendent Leroy Logan MBE, Chair of the London Board advising the Youth Violence Community at the All Party Parliamentary Group, will be responding to the evening’s theme.
  
The Revd Joel Edwards (CBE) will facilitate the evening’s panel discussion, which will also feature Esther Stanford-Xosei and the Revd Karl Johnson, General Secretary of the Jamaica Baptist Union.

In Birmingham, the respondent to Professor Shepherd’s address on reparations will be Professor Robert Beckford, (leading academic, author and broadcaster). The evening will be facilitated by Dr Dulcie Dixon McKenzie, tutor at Queen’s College.



Reparations is a subject increasingly on the agenda for Baptists. Jamaican Baptist leaders raised the topic of reparations for slavery in multiple sessions of the annual gathering of the Baptist World Alliance in July in Nassau, the Bahamas. Three weeks earlier the Angela Project gathering in Birmingham, Alabama, focused on that topic.

The Sam Sharpe Project was set up in 2012 by the Jamaican Baptist Union in partnership with the Heart of England Baptist Association, Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture, Northern Baptist Learning Community, BMS World Mission and the Baptist Union of Great Britain. 

There is no charge to attend the lecture, but there is a booking process to reserve your place, and places are going quickly. The closing date for registering: Sunday 20 October, unless the maximum capacity for the venue has been reached before this date.

 

For more information and to book, visit: baptist.org.uk/samsharpe