March 29, 2010
A Living Witness
Last weekend the Society for the Study of Black Religion (SSBR) convened in Atlanta for its annual conference and to celebrate the organization’s 40th Anniversary. Emerging out of the racial, religious and political ferment of the 1960s, SSBR has long sustained a dual commitment, first, to create spaces for black scholars often marginalized in the broader academy, and second, to cultivate a critical engagement with the particular complexities of religious experience in the African Diaspora. Fittingly, the West African symbol of Sankofa—the image of a bird both facing forward and looking back—was employed to mark the occasion.