Join us for an engaging conversation centered on the topic of Rev. Prof. Mitri Raheb’s forthcoming book, Theology After Gaza. Panelists will wrestle with the question of what theology must look like in light of the horrifying atrocities occurring in Gaza and throughout the West Bank.
Make sure to stay for a reception after the panel discussion so you can browse materials available for purchase from Charis Books & More. The event will be livestreamed on Oakhurst Presbyterian Church’s YouTube Channel for those that are not local to the Atlanta area.
We’re excited to bring these experts to Decatur for this important and timely event.
Dr. Atalia Omer
Atalia Omer is professor of religion, conflict, and peace studies in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. She is a core faculty member of the Keough School's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Atalia earned her PhD in religion, ethics, and politics in 2008 from the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. Her research focuses on religion, violence, and peacebuilding as well as theories and methods in the study of religion and Palestine/Israel. She was a 2017 Andrew Carnegie Fellow, resulting in Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding, published in June 2023 by Oxford University Press. She is part of the leadership team for the new Institute for the Study of Christian Zionism.
Dr. Christine Pae
Keunjoo Christine Pae is professor of religion and women’s and gender studies and chair of the Department of Religion at Denison University. Trained as a social ethicist, she specializes in transnational feminist ethics, ethics of peace and war, spiritual activism, sexual ethics, and Asian/Asian American feminist theologies. Many of her publications take U.S. military prostitution in South Korea as a critical site for producing feminist knowledge concerning militarized violence, faith-based popular resistance, and a theology of peace. She has authored A Transpacific Imagination of Theology, Ethics, and Spiritual Activism (2023) and co-edited Embodying Antiracist Christianity (2023) and Searching for the Future in the Past: Renewing Feminist Theological Voices (2024).
Rev. Prof. Mitri Raheb
Founder and President of Dar al-Kalima University in Bethlehem. The most widely published Palestinian theologian to date, Dr. Raheb is the author and editor of 50 books including Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible. Rev. Raheb served as the senior pastor of the Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem from June 1987 to May 2017 and as the President of the Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land from 2011-2016. A social entrepreneur, Rev. Raheb has founded several NGO’s including the Christian Academic Forum for Citizenship in the Arab World (CAFCAW). He is a founding and board member of the National Library of Palestine, and a founding member of Bright Stars of Bethlehem, a US 501c3 non-for-profit organization. He is an elected member to the Palestinian National Council as well as the Palestinian Central Council.
Dr. Adam Vander Tuig
Adam Vander Tuig earned his PhD in Practical Theology from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York in 2024. Adam is a theologian and educator, born and raised in rural Nebraska. He currently works as the Faith-Based Educator and Researcher at The Highlander Center, a folk and movement school founded in 1932 in the mountains of East Tennessee, and is a recent recipient of a Louisville Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship (2023). He organizes with Christians for a Free Palestine, facilitates base societies with the Institute for Christian Socialism, and is ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Adam is the author of several publications including: “By any Sacramental Means Necessary: Baptism as Engaged Defiance of Ecocide and Empire,” “Reading Water Everywhere: Toward a Lutheran Hydromeneutic,” and “Ordained by Capital: Conscripting Religion in Corporate America.”
With special introduction from
Dr. Thandi Gamedze
Dr. Thandi Gamedze is a South African educator, theologian, cultural worker, and poet based at the University of the Western Cape’s Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice as a Senior Researcher. Her doctoral research was transdisciplinary, bringing together the worlds of education and theology to better understand the churches’ role in upholding and challenging dominant power relations relating to race, gender, and class. Gamedze’s interests include black theology, liberation theology, social justice, education, and the arts, particularly poetry. She has broad experience working across multiple sites, including churches, universities, high schools, and community organizations.
COVID Safety Notice: We highly recommend that you wear a mask at this event. We will have masks available in case you forget to bring one.
Registration Required
Doors at 6:45pm
This event is generously co-sponsored by the following organizations: