Oblate School of Theology awarded an honorary Doctor of Pastoral Leadership degree to Dr. J. Alfred Smith October 23 in recognition of his lifetime of service, academic contribution, and pastoral wisdom. Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI, presented the award during the installation ceremony of Dr. Scott Woodward as the nineteenth president of OST.
Because of corona virus–imposed limitations, attendance at the Immaculate Conception Memorial Chapel was limited to 40 people, which included Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller, MSpS, Sr. Jane Ann Slater, CDP, Chancellor of the Archdiocese, members of the OST Board of Trustees, faculty, and administrators. Dr. Smith attended the event via an internet video connection and a monitor from his home in Oakland, California.
In 40 years as senior pastor of Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, Calif., and 10 years as pastor emeritus, Dr. Smith has been deeply involved in life on the streets of Oakland, particularly within the African American community.
“Long before the struggle for racial justice became mainstream, he was involved. He’s earned respect from all sides, from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to the Black Panthers, Fr. Rolheiser said.
Dr. Smith has received more than 250 awards for his leadership in ministry. Ebony magazine named him one of 115 great African American preachers in U.S. history in 1993. In 1997, he received a Distinguished Author Award from Urban Ministries for his book Falling in Love With God. Author of 17 books, he received the Justin Press Ministry Award for Commitment to Excellence in Publishing in 2018.
He has taught at Oxford and Cambridge universities in Great Britain, and had supervised the opening of a mission in Sierra Leone.
“Oblate School of Theology thanks you for the generous work you’ve done around the world, and particularly the United States, but we want to thank you in a special way for the work you’ve done here. You helped us vision, launch and sustain our program in African American Pastoral Leadership, our Sankofa Institute,” Fr. Rolheiser told the honoree. In fact, Dr. Smith is the founding Chair of the Sankofa Council of Elders.
“That, and all the awards and the places he’s taught, is why we proudly claim Dr. Smith as one of us. Oakland has a street named for him. We can’t name a street after him, but we’re going to give him the highest honor we can bestow, an honorary Doctor of Pastoral Leadership,” Fr. Rolheiser concluded.
Letters from Dr. Stephen Reid, who succeeded Dr. Smith as the council chair in 2016, to Dr. Smith and Dr. Woodward, congratulating them for their honors, were given to them.
Expressing gratitude for the degree, Dr. Smith, appearing on an internet connection streamed in from Oakland, said he was honored to serve as chair of Sankofa’s Council of Elders. “It is a Signal honor to receive this honorary degree on the same occasion that Dr. Scott Woodward is being inaugurated as the new President of Oblate School of Theology.”
He charged OST leaders to continue supporting Sister Addie Lorraine Walker, SSND, who directs the institute, to enable it not only to survive but to thrive. He quoted W.E.B. Dubois, warning, “Either America will destroy ignorance, or ignorance will destroy the United States.”
The minister commented that the Sankofa faculty is challenged by “nones” who have no faith commitment and by “dones” who have been wounded and hurt by the Church and are done with it.
Dr. Smith called for “an apologetic theology that will reach the concerns of people outside institutional religion. They wonder about its authenticity when there are death threats to a woman governor in Michigan and a white male governor in Virginia,” while “the state treats it in a cavalier way and the church is often silent in responding, which seems to imply that we’re complicit with such nihilistic and amoral behavior.”
He asked rhetorically why younger generations should believe in the viability and vitality of the Christian Gospel when its leaders are inadequate in addressing burning questions of justice.
Dr. Smith challenged Sankofa to produce “daring women and courageous men who will sound the trumpet of justice in the land as it’s never been sounded.”
Quoting from Tennyson’s Ulysses, the challenge, “Come, my friends, it’s not too late to seek a newer world,” adding his own observation: “Yes, not too late, but almost.”
He promised that as a member of the Oblate family to lend his own weight in support of the School’s worldwide mission.
By: J. Michael Parker