The 2025 International Colloquium Series Europe (ICS Europe) focused on the theme of The Meaning of Community in an Age of Uncertainty.

The series on May 6-11 was a collaborative undertaking, sponsored by multiple institutions including Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York, the Episcopal Diocese of California, King's College London, Regent's Park College, the University of Oxford, the Center for Black Theology at Regent's Park College Oxford, and the Protestant Theological Faculty of Paris. It also partnered with the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity (the American Cathedral in Paris). The Northern California Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Foundation promoted the event, dedicated to justice, health, education, and service.

Key discussions and important points raised by the presenters included:

The Meaning of Community and Social Justice

• Definition of Social Justice: Dr. Aaron Grizzell explored the meaning of community in an age of uncertainty. He defined social justice as mutual interdependency in confirming and affirming the freedom and dignity of one another. He argued that this concept is rooted in the "archaic route" of the person, derived from the commonality of human experience rather than top-down law.
• Howard Thurman and MLK Jr.: Dr. Grizzell drew on Howard Thurman and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s philosophical grounding. King’s convictions regarding a personal God and the dignity of the human personality were strengthened by his experiences of a loving family and friendly universe.
• The Primordial Ground: The core strength of Thurman and King’s thought is traced to the Middle Passage experience, characterized by the "epitome of absence"—an involuntary physical and psychological terror where African captives were stripped of land, name, and being. This common experience became an ontological primordium for a new community and a social marker, providing a durable foundation for Black existence and theology.

Faith, Wealth, and Freedom

• Faith Plus Wealth Equals Freedom: Dr. Dwight Hopkins argued that achieving freedom for poor and working-class people requires broadening ownership of wealth. His core thesis is that "faith plus wealth equals freedom".
• Defining Wealth and Freedom: Wealth denotes ownership of "earth air and water" (material wealth) and the "perfect balance of the life energy inside of our bodies" (spiritual wealth). Freedom is defined as "not owing anything or anyone anything" so a person can freely practice their purpose.
• Biblical Support: Dr. Hopkins connected this framework to the liberation message of Jesus, citing Luke 4:16-21, which proclaims good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, and the Year of the Lord’s favor (Jubilee), denoting debt forgiveness, land restitution, and freedom from slavery. He also used the parable of the talents (Matthew 25) to stress the vocational call for working-class people to multiply wealth through financial literacy and business management, rather than hoarding it.
• MLK Jr.'s Economic Call: Dr. Hopkins highlighted Dr. King's final speech (April 3, 1968), urging Black Americans to deposit money in Black-owned banks and insurance companies to build an economic base.

Black Aesthetics and Theological Analogies

• The Gospel According to Thelonious Monk: Dr. Raymond Carr used the jazz musician Thelonious Monk's musical aesthetic as a medium and analogy for radical theological direction. His presentation, "Hearing the light the gospel according to Thelonious Monk," emphasized Monk’s use of dialogical tension and disharmonious harmony.
• Playing Inside and Outside Tradition: Monk's approach involved playing "inside of tradition" (using the past with his left hand) and innovating "outside of tradition" (with his right hand), often referred to as signifying. His focus was on the melody (the 'cantus firmus') and rhythm.
• Hermeneutical Musicality: Carr argued that Monk inspires a mode of thinking that troubles the objective (Barth’s interpretation of Mozart) and subjective (Cone’s participation in the spirituals and blues) categories, playing in the "surplus" or "in between the cracks". This approach encourages hearing the light and frees theological thinking from restrictive, overdetermining categories.
• Extra-Church Realities: The analogy of Monk's music suggests that the gospel can be heard in "extra church realities" (folklore, spirituals, blues, hip hop, etc.), which set the word of God in relief outside the church walls (extra murals ekklesia).

Womanist Theology, Narrative, and Hope

• The Art of Everyday Life: Rev. Dr. Andrea C. White explored womanist accounts of black aesthetics and time. She drew on Katie Cannon's claim that the **Black women's literary tradition** is the unsurpassed source for understanding the soul of the community and its moral wisdom. Black women's creative acts carve out a "living space".
• Critique of Redemptive Suffering: Womanist theology resists notions of redemptive suffering or sacralizing servantthood. The Hagar narrative is interpreted as a doctrine of providence and survival strategy (art of cunning, care, encounter) rather than soteriology.
• Narrative and Temporality: Using narrative theory (Paul Ricoeur), Dr. White argued that storytelling creates an "ethical laboratory" for moral negotiation. Narrative synthesis creates a "concordant discordance" that configures fractured experience, maximizing agency and demonstrating how the imagination saves the world.
• Black Feminist Futurity: Blackness, often construed as lack or indexed to death, should instead be viewed as a heuristic for imaging the human otherwise. Black Feminist Futurity involves a "politics of prefiguration" or "living the future now".
• Afropessimism and Hope: Dr. White interrogated Afropessimism (black nihilism), noting its seduction and its apocalyptic impulse to radically undo the unethical world order. She suggested that Afropessimism's **refusal of hope** might be the necessary condition for a womanist theology of hope.

South African Music and Apartheid Context

• Black Music Education: Bernett Mulungo discussed the influence of indigenous and traditional African/South African music on jazz composition and the history of music education for black Africans during the colonial and apartheid eras. Informal music education was vital due to the lack of formal structures, often operating from an ethos of self-help.
• Music and Liberation: Mulungo highlighted how musicians used compositions as political commentary, sometimes subtly and sometimes overtly, discussing compositions tied to themes of loss, exile, and struggle during apartheid. This included works workshopped at the Dorkay House, an informal gathering space for black musicians. Miriam Makeba's performance choices and her 1963 speech at the UN brought attention to the struggle for liberation, resulting in the revocation of her passport.