Tuesday, March 3, 6:30 p.m.
Asbury Hall

We are pleased to have R. Scot Miller returning as our guest speaker for the next “First Tuesday Lecture Series.”  R. Scot Miller will speak on “Listening to African American Truths – James H. Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree.” This book is a landmark in the conversation about race and religion in America, appropriately scheduled during Lent, and will also be the topic of our Lent sermon series as well as a book study group on Sundays. Everyone is welcome to attend this free event. Light refreshments will be served. Be sure to read R. Scot Miller’s bio below.

R. Scot Miller ma, mdiv, msw, PhD candidate
Chicago Theological Seminary

Assembled in Flint, ridden hard in Detroit, R. Scot Miller was restored by faithfulness after a long period of substance dependency, homelessness, and deep depression. Having grown up in a Lutheran context but turning to atheism at an early age; God came to re-establish relationship with him. Miller began experiencing the divine once again and believed these events were authentic. His passion for justice, revolution, and community suddenly made sense as he began to read and interpret the way God worked in his life in a manner that made sense of his actions and behaviors of the past. With new hope for the future, Miller work as a clinician for a substance abuse facility in Battle Creek. He spent most of 2016 ministering in Flint, Michigan as a responder to the water crisis there. He has served under the auspices of Common Spirit at First Church of the Brethren in Flint in the neighborhood he was born in.

Miller identifies most firmly as a Quaker and Attends Red Cedar Friends Meetings in Lansing. He has served as an adjunct professor of social work at Kuyper College and as an adjunct professor at the Earlham School of Religion.

R. Scot Miller is particularly drawn to apocalyptic expressions of early Quakerism, and to witnessing to Christendom regarding the heresy of white supremacy and racism in the church; and the unfortunate reality of the American church’s enmeshment with Empire, economic stability, and electoral power and control. The Constantinian error and Laodicean spiritual muck of American Christian whiteness has brought need of judgment. Miller is the author of Gospel of the Absurd , a Licensed Clinical MSW, former Community and low-power FM radio pirate, and micro-farming, food-justice, whiteness,-intervention-studies PhD candidate at Chicago Theological Seminary.

Miller recently wrote a journal article for Quaker Theology to help white Christians identify the origins of their religious and political beliefs, and how such origins impact themes of voluntary sacrifice, maintenance of privilege, and willingness to bear the cross in terms of the biblical witness rather than rely solely on political power to achieve outcomes that are deemed just. He presents an overview of how the childhoods, educational opportunities, and privilege as well as institutionalized racism impacted the religious, political, and social activism of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Reinhold Niebuhr. Scot will shows how the legacy of each individual is directly related to outcomes that were potentially directed by experiences of life that indeed may have been closely tied to the destiny of each. Miller asks the question: does the gospel of Christ’s cross allow us an alternative narrative that guides us toward a destiny informed by God and justice other than that of our forbearers and the culture’s expectations.

R. Scot Miller was born in Flint and lived in Detroit for much of his early adult life. He now lives in Hastings, MI with his wife and two children, Rosa and Micah. Scot’s adult sons, Kellen and Dylan, live in Detroit. His eldest daughter, Emma attends Michigan State University and resides outside of East Lansing. He holds a Master of the Arts degree and a Master of Divinity Degree from the Earlham School of Religion. He holds a Master of Social Work Degree from Grand Valley State University. Miller graduated from Kuyper College in Grand Rapids with a Bachelor of Social Work