'Recentering the Theological Canon' - the Cadbury Lectures 2026

Delivered by Emilie M. Townes, Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Religion & Black Studies in the School of Theology, Boston University

The lectures take place across 3 concurrent evenings from 5-7pm, Tuesday to Thursday May 19 to 21. You can register for them individually.

Democracy has become a contested ideal or goal in the US in recent years. This lecture explores what democracy does and does not mean, and I argue that it is still a worthy goal for U.S. society as a whole—but it will take work and willpower to get there. This combination of work and willpower is what I call “colored orneriness” and I explore how it can be helpful in creating a more just society.

Using a scene from Black Martinican writer Patrick Chamoiseau’s A Sunday at the Dungeon: Novel as a launching point, I use the lenses of the shocking, the outrageous, decentering horror, and the indecent to probe the ways in which scholarship and teaching that focuses on religion should be grounded in creating greater spaces of justice and hope rather than fear and loathing.

This final lecture is to make use of a main idea from each of the previous lectures—scholarship and teaching that are focused on creating greater spaces of justice and hope, a robust commitment/recommitment to democracy making, and growing our scholarship large in such a way that we speak directly to the challenges we are facing in higher education and our larger society that is currently leaning toward deadly polarizations that we both decry and maintain. I explore how we can employ our knowledge and skills as scholars of religion to build a better world for all.

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Host or Publisher University of Birmingham