For Immediate Release

Longtime Peace Activist to Give Princeton Seminary’s Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture on Assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and
Malcolm X

Princeton, NJ, March 15, 2006– James W. Douglass, a Roman Catholic theologian, author, and long-time peace activist, will give the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture at Princeton Theological Seminary on Wednesday, March 29 at 7:30 p.m. in Miller Chapel. His lecture is titled “The Converging Martyrdom of Malcolm and Martin.”

For the past ten years, Douglass has been researching and writing on the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and John and Robert Kennedy. He was the only writer to attend from beginning to end and to report in detail on the first trial for the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., held at Memphis, Tennessee, in November/December 1999. He has written four books on the theology of nonviolence: The Nonviolent Cross (Macmillan, 1968), Resistance and Contemplation (Doubleday, 1972), Lightning East to West (Crossroads, 1983), and The Nonviolent Coming of God (Orbis, 1991), and he coauthored with his wife, Shelley, Dear Gandhi: Now What? (New Society Publishers, 1988).

Douglass has served as a theological advisor on questions of nuclear war and conscientious objection to Catholic bishops at the Second Vatican Council in Rome, helped found the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action alongside the Trident nuclear submarine base near Seattle, Washington, taken part in a series of peacemaking journeys to the Middle East, and founded Mary’s House, a Catholic Worker house of hospitality for homeless families in Birmingham, Alabama. He has taught theology at Bellarmine College in Louisville, Kentucky, at the University of Hawaii, and in the Program for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence at the University of Notre Dame.

Douglass recommends that anyone attending his lecture should read his article, “The Martin Luther King Conspiracy Exposed in Memphis” (Probe Magazine, 2000) beforehand. Copies are available free of charge and may be requested from the Seminary’s Communications/Publications Office at comm-pub@ptsem.edu or by calling 609.497.7760.           

The Princeton Seminary faculty established the annual King Lecture as a way of honoring the man who, according to Professor Peter Paris Jr., “ranks among the greatest American leaders in both church and state because he combined religious, social, and political resources in pursuit of racial justice and the moral enhancement of the common life.” Previous lecturers have included James H. Cone, Katie Geneva Cannon, and Michael Dyson. For more information, call 609.497.7760.