URGENT! free lectures in Berkeley today Wed.1/24-Th. 1/25

If you live near Berkeley CA and are free at 9 this morning or 1:45 this afternoon, or at 9 or 1:45 tomorrow, Thursday, Jan. 25th, think about coming to the free lectures given to us all by the Pacific School of Religion, part of the Graduate Theological Union, related to UC Berkeley, and sitting right next door to it. [If you can't come, wait a few days and look at and listen to the PSR website: www.psr.edu to hear all the lectures from earlier in the week by Robert Bellah, Dr. Mahmood Ayoub, a Muslim scholar of religions, both older men worth listening to, and a new professor of New Testament at PSR, Dr. Tat-siong Benny Liew, a pioneering young man.] The series is called "All the Rivers of Paradise: Christian Responsibilities in an Interfaith World ".
The lectures are actually given in a large church auditorium/sanctuary of the First Congregational Church where Bill Coffin used to preach frequently, located at the corner of Durant Ave. and Channing Way, just a couple blocks south of Bancroft and the UCB campus. The #51 ACTransit bus will take you to the corner.
The lecture this morning from 9 am to 10:30 is by Rev. Bernice Powell Jackson, the African American president of the World Council of Churches for North America, and for many years a top officer of the United Church of Christ but currently helping re-start a UCC church in New Orleans after their flood. She will also deliver the Thursday afternoon sermon tomorrow at 1:45 in the same location, closing the series of lectures.
The afternoon lecture at 1:45 is given by PSR's longtime faculty member, Dr. Choan-Seng Song, Taiwan's gift to the US, and a world known speaker and leader in the realm of Asian and Pacific theology and church life and Asian religions.
There will be a closing panel at 9 am on Thursday with Rev. Paul Chaffee, founder of the Interfaith Center at the Presidio in SF, Maha ElGanaidi, founder of the Islamic Networks Group [ING], and Quaker Matthai Chakko Kuruvila from South India, religion editor for the SF Chronicle, and Yolanda Trevino, an indigenous Mayan from Guatemala who has worked for years to introduce members of indigenous traditions to one another and to us latecomers to the Americas, who have had a bad habit of genocide of such folks. These panelists will deal with "Scenarios for an Interfaith Future".
Even if you do not manage to come to these live presentations, I encourage you to at least take 10 minutes or more to look at the PSR website, www.psr.edu with dozens of past Earl Lecture and some anti-war presentations that you can hear, and download to your computer, and also look at the other free offers of church bulletin inserts from the Progressive Christian Witness, the R2W Youth programs of a pioneering sort for minority young people with a generous summer program at PSR and a blog worth looking into. I once thought my going to Yale Divinity School was part of future looking theological education, but PSR and the GTU are way ahead of my Eastern, stodgy Yale efforts to be "with it". Do get a glimpse of the exciting and revolutionary offerings found here in the East Bay.