House of Hope’s Sunday Series invites well-known speakers to discuss key issues of our day and artists to share their artistic engagement with life and faith.
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Widely performed throughout the country, the music of American composer Gwyneth Walker is beloved by performers and audiences alike for its energy, beauty, reverence, drama, and humor. Dr. Gwyneth Walker (b. 1947) is a graduate of Brown University and the Hartt School of Music. She holds B.A., M.M. and D.M.A. degrees in Music Composition. A former faculty member of the Oberlin College Conservatory, she resigned from academic employment in 1982 in order to pursue a career as a full-time composer.
A composer since age two, Gwyneth Walker has always placed great value on writing in a broad array of genres. More than 400 commissioned works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo instruments, chorus, and solo voice have been created—all arising from the impetus of performers and collaboration with musicians. Over the decades, she has traveled throughout North America to attend performances of her works and to meet her musician colleagues. Dr. Walker joined us for a Community Sing featuring the House of Hope Motet Choir and The Singers and a concert featuring The Singers.
Kate Bowler, Ph.D., a New York Times bestselling author, podcast host, and professor at Duke University, brings a unique perspective to her work. She delves into the cultural narratives we construct around success, suffering, and our capacity for change. In a world fraught with challenges and uncertainties, Kate Bowler stands out as a beacon of hope and humor, guiding others through their darkest moments with her resilience, wisdom, and infectious optimism.
As a speaker, Kate has a remarkable ability to ignite a spark of transformation within each listener. Her talks inspire them to embrace their vulnerabilities, discover purpose, and approach life with a newfound sense of meaning. To hear Kate Bowler speak is to embark on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth, an experience that leaves a lasting imprint on hearts and minds.
At age 35, she was unexpectedly diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, causing her to think in different terms about the research and beliefs she had been studying. She penned the New York Times bestselling memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved), which tells the story of her struggle to understand the personal and intellectual dimensions of the American belief that all tragedies are tests of character.
On her popular podcast, Everything Happens, Kate speaks with people like Malcolm Gladwell, Tig Notaro, Bryan Stevenson, Minka Kelly, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, and Katie Couric about what wisdom and truth they’ve uncovered during difficult circumstances. Kate’s work has received widespread media attention from The Today Show, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR. Her TED talk has been viewed more than 10 million times.
Heather Cox Richardson is Professor of History at Boston College and an expert on American political and economic history. She is the author of seven books on American politics. Her most recent book is Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America.
Heather is a leading #Twitterstorian, explaining the historical background of modern political issues through Twitter threads, the co-editor of We’re History, a web magazine of popular history, and the author of Letters from an American, a chronicle of American politics.
The Justice Choir organization builds awareness of social, environmental, and racial justice and elevates these topics through singing. On the eve of Black History Month, join The Singers for a 60-minute sharing of the Justice Choir Songbook, including stirring songs by Melanie DeMore, Tesfa Wondemagegnehu, Abbie Betinis, and others.
The goal of the Justice Choir Songbook is a grassroots movement to engage in the empathetic, collaborative, and collective power of singing together to create change. The Justice Choir Songbook is a powerful collection of songs for the issues of our time and includes 43 new and re-purposed songs selected from a national Call for Scores.
Alan C. Page was born on August 7, 1945, in Canton, Ohio. He graduated from Canton Central Catholic High School in 1963, received his B.A. in political science from the University of Notre Dame in 1967, and received his J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1978. After graduating from law school, Alan Page worked as an attorney for a law firm in Minneapolis, then served seven years as an attorney in the office of the Minnesota Attorney General. He sought election to the Minnesota Supreme Court in 1992 and won, becoming the first African American on the court. He served until he reached the mandatory retirement age of 70 in 2015. In November 2018, Justice Page received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Law was Alan Page’s second career; he was first known for his skills in football both in college and in the NFL. At Notre Dame, Alan Page led the school’s storied football program to the 1966 national championship, and in 1993 he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Alan Page was a first-round draft choice of the Minnesota Vikings in 1967 and he played for the Vikings until 1978. The last three years of his football career were with the Chicago Bears, 1978-1981. In 1971 he was named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player, becoming only the second defensive player in history to be named MVP. In 1988 he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and in 2019 he was chosen as a member of the NFL’s 100th Anniversary All-Time Team.
Also in 1988, Alan Page and his late wife Diane founded the Page Education Foundation, which assists Minnesota students of color in their pursuit of post-secondary education. To date, the foundation has awarded $16 million in grants to more than 8,000 students. Justice Page and his daughter, Kamie Page, have written four children’s picture books.
An Afternoon with George Takei: Where No Story Has Gone Before
George Takei is a social justice activist, social media superstar, Grammy-nominated recording artist, New York Times bestselling author, and pioneering actor. He has appeared in more than 40 feature films and hundreds of television roles, most famously as Hikaru Sulu in Star Trek.
With an uncanny eloquence and signature wit, Takei shares the story of his family’s forced internment as Japanese Americans during WWII—a seemingly forgotten part of American history. He also takes audiences through his rise to celebrity as a sci-fi icon, his remarkable journey as social media mega-power, and his passionate fight for LGBTQ+ rights and marriage equality in America empowering others to beat the odds and make a difference.
George Takei is known around the world for his role in the acclaimed original TV series Star Trek, in which he played Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the starship Enterprise. But Takei’s story, which includes an acting career that spans six decades, goes where few have gone before. From a childhood spent with his family wrongfully imprisoned in Japanese American internment camps during World War II to becoming one of the country’s leading figures in the fight for social justice, LGBTQ+ rights and marriage equality, Takei remains a powerful voice on issues ranging from politics to pop culture.
Heather McGhee designs and promotes solutions to inequality in America. Over her career in public policy, Heather has crafted legislation, testified before Congress and helped shape presidential campaign platforms. Her book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together spent 10 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was longlisted for the National Book Award and Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. The New York Times called it, “The book that should change how progressives talk about race.” and the Chicago Tribune said, “Required reading to move the country forward…”.
For nearly two decades, Heather helped build the non-partisan “think and do” tank Demos, serving four years as president. Under McGhee’s leadership,
An influential voice in the media and a former NBC contributor, McGhee regularly appears on NBC’s Meet the Press and MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Deadline White House and All In. Her 2020 TED talk is entitled “Racism Has a Cost for Everyone”. She has shared her opinions, writing and research in numerous outlets, including the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Politico, and National Public Radio. She holds a B.A. in American Studies from Yale University and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. McGhee is the chair of the board of Color Of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization.
David Brooks has a gift for bringing audiences face to face with the spirit of our times with humor, insight, and quiet passion. He is a keen observer of the American way of life and a savvy analyst of present-day politics and foreign affairs.
He holds several prestigious positions as a commentator: bi-weekly Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times and regular analyst on PBS NewsHour and NPR’s All Things Considered. Brook’s New York Times bestseller, The Road to Character, “explains why selflessness leads to greater success. He tells the story of ten great lives that illustrate how character is developed, and how we can all strive to build rich inner lives, marked by humility and moral depth. In a society that emphasizes success and external achievement, The Road to Character is a book about inner worth.”
Pulitzer Prize winner and writer Leonard Pitts, Jr. is the author of the bestseller, Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood, a poignant account of the meaning of black fatherhood in the contemporary United States. His Miami Herald column on current affairs and human rights is syndicated in more than 250 newspapers. He has also won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists, the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, among others.
As part of our environmental awareness focus this spring, House of Hope is proud to welcome National Geographic’s Joel Sartore as our Sunday Series speaker.
Photographer, speaker, author, teacher, conservationist, National Geographic fellow, National Geographic magazine contributor, Joel launched the Photo Ark project 11 years ago in his hometown of Lincoln, NE. Since then, his passion for preservation and conservation has taken him—and his camera—to 40 countries in a quest to create the Photo Ark archive of global biodiversity.
Don Lemon is a veteran TV journalist and trusted source of information from CNN, NBC, and MSNBC. Relatable and charismatic, Lemon’s award-winning work defies genre, candidly exposing injustice and the resiliency of the human spirit. A true product of the modern news age, Lemon discusses how he has embraced social media’s power to reach viewers. An inspiration to diverse audiences, he shares his hard-fought rise to primetime as one of the most prominent African-American and gay men in TV news today.
Dr. Michael Eric Dyson-an American Book Award recipient and two-time NAACP Image Award winner-is one of the nation’s most influential and renowned public intellectuals. He has been named one of the 150 most powerful African Americans by Ebony magazine.
Most recently, he’s published Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America. Named a bestseller by publications such as New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and more, the book has been hailed as a profound and provocative analysis of modern-day race relations. Later this year, he will be releasing the book What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America, which explores the history of the intersections between race and democracy.
Led by David Baldwin, The Summit Hill Brass Quintet concert included early music in addition to con-temporary classics for brass quintet. Organist Aaron David Miller joined them in Virgil Fox’s well known arrangement of Bach’s “Now Thank We All Our God.”
Legendary music artist and actor Harry Belafonte possesses unparalleled experience in the arena of world-wide social justice struggles. Through his friendship with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., his work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, his role as celebrity ambassador for juvenile justice issues with the ACLU, Belafonte provides a vital perspective on some of the most pressing issues of our time-from the Black Lives Matter movement to U.S. foreign policy and humanitarianism in Africa.
First Lady Jill Biden, is a community college educator, best-selling author, military mother & grandmother, and wife of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. As First Lady, Dr. Biden continues her work for education, military families, and fighting cancer. She is a professor of writing at Northern Virginia Community College.
Award-winning presidential historian, NBC News and PBS NewsHour contributor, The New York Times columnist, and best-selling author, Michael Beschloss provided gripping tales and brilliant inside analysis, revealing the leadership secrets of great presidents and other towering figures in history. He shared original and unforgettable stories to illuminate the behind-the-scenes lives of American presidents and other titans, as well as describing the leadership skills essential to success.
