The FaithJustice Foundation is pleased to announce our seventh annual The State of the Dream event honoring the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Our theme is “Beyond Mercy to Social Justice.”

The program is designed for people of faith who have wondered how to incorporate social justice into local church ministry. Many church missions programs focus on mercy, which includes meeting the immediate needs of those in their communities. Social justice ministry, by contrast, challenges the political and economic systems that perpetuate inequality. For example, mercy ministry feeds the homeless. Social justice ministry fights for affordable housing and economic justice. Both are needed.

Presented in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the seventh annual The State of the Dream will explore how congregations can move beyond mercy to social justice. 

Panelists:

• Aimee H. Hong is Senior Executive Director of Education and Engagement, General Board of Church and Society, United Methodist Church, where she designs and facilitates educational seminars, webinars and curriculum to deepen the connection between faith and justice. Her goal is to transform minds and hearts for advocacy for a just world. Before joining the General Board of Church and Society, Aimee served as an education director/pastor, shepherding the spiritual formation of elementary, youth and college students for 1.5-generation/2nd-generation Korean Americans in a large Korean immigrant church. She also served as a local pastor and education director, actively incorporating justice and peace into faith formation. Aimee holds a Bachelor of Arts in Religion from Oberlin College, Master of Theological Studies and a Master of Divinity from Candler School of Theology, Emory University.

• Rev. William H. Lamar IV is pastor of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Washington, DC. An ordained itinerant elder in the AME Church, Lamar has also served congregations in Florida and Maryland. Prior to his most recent appointments, Lamar was the managing director of Leadership Education at Duke University Divinity School, where he convened and resourced executive pastors of larges churches, denominational finance executives, young denominational leaders, Methodist bishops, and the constituency of Lilly Endowment’s Sustaining Pastoral Excellence Program. For nearly 15 years, Lamar has been actively involved with organizations like Direct Action Research Training (DART), Industrial Areas Foundations (IAF), and Washington Interfaith Network (WIN) for faith-based community organizing for justice. Most recently, he has collaborated with Repairers of the Breach, the Center for Community Change (CCC), and People Improving Communities through Organization (PICO) to enact a social justice ministry in surrounding communities and to exhibit a real embrace the beloved community. 1996 magna cum laude graduate of Florida A&M University, Lamar earned the Bachelor of Science degree in Public Management with a minor in Philosophy and Religion and a certificate in Human Resource Management. In 1999, he earned the Master of Divinity degree from Duke University. Lamar is currently a doctoral student in the inaugural cohort of Christian Theological Seminary’s Ph.D. program in African-American Preaching and Sacred Rhetoric. An avid reader and writer, Lamar has published articles in outlets such as Christian Century, The Christian Recorder, Divinity Magazine, “FaithandLeadership.com,” The Anvil, “TheUndefeated.com,” and the “Huffington Post.” He has also been featured in The Washington Post and the Afro-American and on “The Takeaway,” the “Huffington Post Live,” and PBS “News Hour.”

• Rev. Leslie Watson Wilson is the National Director of African American Religious Affairs (AARA) for People for the American Way. As the director, Leslie is responsible for program planning, implementation of the two core programs that make up AARA: African American Ministers Leadership Council (AAMLC – 501c3) and African American Ministers In Action (AAMIA – 501c4). She has also created four new opportunities to inform and engage the 2400 faith leader membership: “Healing Grace – Shepherds Gathering: A Dialogue on The Black Church, Stigma, Prejudice and Homophobia,” the VESSELS civic education and participation initiative, the Micah Leadership Council for faith leaders under the age of 40, and the VASHTI health and leadership initiative for African American women and girls. Reverend Wilson is the former national policy director for the Balm In Gilead and served for nine years as the director of the Multicultural Programs Department of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice where she managed and developed La Iniciativa Latina (LIL), the Women of Color Partnership Project (WOCPP), and the National Black Church Initiative (NBCI) which included annual planning of the National Black Religious Summit on Sexuality for African American clergy and laity. Leslie has served as the national coordinator and field director for the National Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and the coordinator of the Public Policy Institute of the Citizenship Education Fund, the 501(c)(3) arm of the Rainbow. She is a master trainer, has written 6 training curriculum (1 award winning) and has provided training to over 28,000 leaders almost exclusively within the African American faith community for over 30 years.

• Randy Keesler is the Southeast Regional Coordinator for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the anti-poverty program of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, where he has worked for over 27 years, funding hundreds of community organizations working with low-income constituencies in the Northeastern and Southeastern states. A former Episcopalian seminarian, he joined the United Farmworkers national boycott staff in 1975 in their campaign to organize an agricultural union for farmworkers in California.  He worked as a community organizer during the 1990s in Southern Md, and with the Industrial Areas Foundation in Baltimore before coming to the Bishop’s Conference. He is President of the Kenesaw-Phoenix Housing Cooperative located in Washington DC and the Chair of the Social Justice Ministry of Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, also located in the District of Columbia.

• Moderator: Rev. Kevin J. Agee is Presiding Elder, Washington-Virginia District, Christian Methodist Episcopal Church and Pastor of Russell Temple Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia. He has pastored churches in Virginia, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD. Presiding Elder Agee’s awards for social justice advocacy include the 2008 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drum Major for Justice from the Jersey City Branch NAACP, the 2013 Freedom Award from the Syracuse Onondaga Branch NAACP, and the 2014 Racial Justice Catalyst Award from the Community Wide Dialogue to End Racism of Interfaith Works of Central New York. He is presently a member of the board of directors of the FaithJustice Foundation.