Oakwood University's Martin Luther King Jr. celebration features Vanderbilt historian (with video)

The Rev. Dr. Lewis Baldwin, a professor of religion at Vanderbilt University who will be speaking Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013, in Huntsville at Oakwood University, is editor of the recently published collection of prayers by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "Thou, Dear God." The Rev. Dr. Julius Scruggs, pastor of Huntsville's First Missionary Baptist Church and president of the National Baptist Convention, is author of the book's foreword. (Beacon Press)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – Historian and Baptist minister Dr. Lewis V. Baldwin will speak during Oakwood University's celebration of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013.

Baldwin's talk comes two months short of the 50th anniversary of King's own visit to Oakwood on March 19, 1962.

Baldwin, who is professor in religious studies at Vanderbilt University and author of several books on King, will speak Tuesday, 6 p.m., in the Richards Chapel of Moseley Complex.

The Moseley Complex is the addition on the west side of the Oakwood Seventh-day Adventist Church, which is just off Adventist Boulevard on the Oakwood campus.

Baldwin edited the collection of Martin Luther King's prayer that was just published in 2012, "Thou, Dear God: Prayers that open hearts and spirits."

The foreword for that book is written by the Rev. Dr. Julius Scruggs, senior pastor of Huntsville's First Missionary Baptist Church and president of the National Baptist Convention.

Those prayers, Baldwin said in a recent radio interview with NPR's Tavis Smiley, "reveal the human, private Martin Luther King Jr." for an age that tends to make iconic leaders into super humans -- rather than mere human beings who do what they do through a dependence on God.

Baldwin is a native of Camden, which is in Alabama’s Blackbelt. He participated in civil rights demonstrations there during the 1960s. His bachelor’s in history is from Talledega College. He holds a master’s in Black Church Studies and a master’s in theology from Colgate-Rochester Divinity School. His doctorate in American Christianity is from Northwestern University.

Ordained as a Baptist minister, Baldwin’s career has been as a professor in colleges in Ohio, New York and Tennessee. He’s published several books, including “There Is a Balm in Gilead: The cultural roots of Martin Luther King Jr. and “To Make the Wounded Whole: The cultural legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. He also edited the collection of King’s prayers, “

As editor of the projects, Baldwin has collaborated with other scholars on “Between the Cross and the Crescent: Christian and Muslim perspectives on Malcolm and Martin” and “The Boundaries of Law, Politics, and Religion: Revisiting the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.”

Also on Tuesday evening, the Rev. Dr. Calvin Butts III, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, will deliver the keynote address for the Greater Huntsville Interdenominational Ministerial Fellowship's annual community celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Emancipation Proclamation.

Below is the Beacon Press introduction to the new book --

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