Ecumenical Advocacy Days for Global Peace with Justice is pleased to announce the first among a slate of preachers, speakers and panel presentations that will highlight its 16th annual National Gathering in Washington, D.C., April 20-23, 2018.
When we gather for a joyful opening celebration on the Friday night that begins our National Gathering, we will welcome keynote preacher Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Conde-Frazier, Vice President of Education and Dean of Esperanza College at Eastern University in Pennsylvania.
Rev. Dr. Conde-Frazier has been a religious education professor at the Claremont School of Theology and taught Hispanic/Latino/a theology at the Latin American Bible Institute in California. As professor, she mentored Latino/a students and wrote in the areas of multicultural education, Latina feminist theology, the spirituality of the scholar, and issues of justice as they relate to education. She founded the Orlando E. Costas Hispanic and Latin American Ministries Program at Andover Newton Theological School, and has overseen programs for the development of ministers and lay leaders. She has over ten years experience as an ordained pastor.
Coming to #EAD2018 and haling from the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, we are also pleased to announced keynote speaker, Dr. Elizabeth Ferris.
Dr. Ferris is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. From January to September 2016, she served as senior advisor to the U.N. General Assembly’s Summit for Refugees and Migrants in New York. Prior to that she was a senior fellow and co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement for nealry ten years, where she worked to support understanding and protection of internally displaced persons. Prior to joining Brookings, she spent 20 years working in the field of humanitarian assistance, most recently in Geneva, Switzerland at the World Council of Churches. She has also served as the director of the Church World Service’s Immigration and Refugee Program.
We are pleased to welcome Rev. Julian DeShazier to #EAD2018. He will be our featured artist and preacher at our Spoken Word Cafe. Rev. DeShazier hails from Chicago, Illinois, where he became Senior Pastor of University Church in November 2010.
A Chicago native, he is a graduate of Morehouse College and the University of Chicago Divinity School. Julian previously served as Teen Pastor at Covenant United Church of Christ, and has also worked extensively with the Coca-Cola Leadership Program and the Fund for Theological Education. Pastor Julian is also an award-winning hip-hop musician and songwriter, known to many as J.Kwest. In 2015, he won an EMMY Award for his role in the short film Strange Fruit. He has also been featured on FOX, CBS and NPR; on the late Dr. Maya Angelou’s Sirius XM radio program; and on the cover of the Chicago Reader.