Our Black History Month Celebration continues, right after worship, with a special concert and fellowship hour with Rev. Sekou, a preacher, musician, and leader in the Black Lives Matter movement.
Join us on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/94781085898, (929) 436-2866. Meeting ID: 947 8108 5898. Passcode: 845120. We will also simultaneously broadcast to the Church's Facebook and YouTube accounts.
Noted activist, theologian, author, documentary filmmaker, and musician, Reverend Osagyefo Sekou was born in St. Louis, Missouri and raised in the rural Arkansas Delta. Rev. Sekou's music is an unique combination of Arkansas Delta Blues, Memphis Soul 1970s funk, and Gospel. In May 2017, he released "In Times Like These” produced the six-time Grammy nominated North Mississippi Allstars. AFROPUNK heralded the “deep bone-marrow-level conviction” of his first album, “The Revolution Has Come”. The single, “We Comin'”—was named the new anthem for the modern Civil Rights movement by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
A leading public intellectual, Rev. Sekou written two collection of essays. Urbansouls: Meditations on Youth, Hip Hop, and Religion" and "Gods, Gays, and Guns: Essays on Religion and the Future of Democracy". He has written widely on the 2011 killing of Mark Duggan by British police and the subsequent London riots, and is the author of the forthcoming "Riot Music: Race, Hip Hop and the Meaning of the London Riots 2011" (Hamilton Books).
Rev. Sekou is featured in Orlando de Guzman’s 2015 documentary film Ferguson: A Report from Occupied Territory. He was arrested multiple times during the Ferguson Uprising, including for ‘Praying while Black’ outside the Ferguson Police Department, alongside over 40 clergy, faith leaders and community members during the 500-strong Moral Monday protest during the Ferguson October convergence, and, on Moral Monday 2015. With the Deep Abiding Love Project, he has helped trained over ten thousand clergy and activists in militant nonviolent civil disobedience through the United States.
Having studied continental philosophy at the New School, systematic theology at Union Theological Seminary, and religion at Harvard University, Rev. Sekou has lectured widely, including at Princeton University, Harvard Divinity School, the University of Virginia, University of Paris IV - La Sorbonne, and Vanderbilt University, and is a former Professor of Preaching in the Graduate Theological Urban Studies Program at the Seminary Consortium of Urban Pastoral Education, Chicago, IL.
Reverend Sekou served as Pastor for Formation and Justice at First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain, Boston. He was formerly Senior Pastor of Lemuel Haynes Congregational Church in Queens, served as Special Assistant on Social Justice to the Bishop for the Church of God in Christ, Senior Community Minister at New York’s Judson Memorial Church, and Social Justice Minister at Middle Collegiate Church, New York. He has been Fellow-in-Residence at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, and as Ella Baker Fellow at New York Theological Seminary's Micah Institute, he served as a strategist organizing clergy for economic justice in New York City.
For a more robust bio, please visit Reverend Sekou’s Bio.