Margaret Renkl is the author of Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss. She is also a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, where her essays appear each Monday. Growing up in Alabama, Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. In her address at Calvary, Renkl ties the gospel of Luke with our place and responsibility to the natural world. “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin; yet I say unto you, Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” When Jesus offered this message of reassurance to his disciples, he wasn’t talking about climate change. But for us these words can offer more than comfort — they can also inspire engagement with the imperiled natural world. Consider the lilies and make a commitment to save the world they need to survive. To save the planet we need to survive.

Dynamic, significant, and prophetic, Jemar Tisby is a public historian with the ability to explore racial justice solutions and cultural conversations that compel listeners to action. He provides audiences with richly-informed explorations, unflinching moral insight, and clear paths forward. He has recently taken the position of CEO of The Witness Incorporated, a nonprofit organization he founded, which is dedicated to Black uplift from a Christian perspective. Jemar is the author of two books, The Color of Compromise—a New York Times bestseller—and How to Fight Racism, released in January 2021. His writing has also been featured in the Washington Post, CNN, and The Atlantic among others. Tisby is currently a Ph.D. candidate in History at the University of Mississippi studying race, religion, and social movements in the twentieth century.

Over nearly 20 years at LPS, Marcus Borg challenged assumptions and nurtured lifelong friendships at Calvary. After his death in 2015, several of those friends began an endowment in order to continue his legacy of intellectual and spiritual inquiry. Marcus Borg Endowed Speakers reflect Marcus's willingness to challenge sacred texts and ideas while still remaining grounded in them.

Jemar Tisby came to the Christian faith through a door he never expected: a theologically conservative white evangelical church. As a new Christian and a Black man, Jemar studied the words and actions of Jesus. This led to the desire to understand the history of the Christian church and particularly the ways in which it has been complicit in systemic racism. Jemar’s scholarly work provokes reflection and calls readers to actions that promote justice in line with the way of Jesus. Keeping scriptural texts close, Jemar’s work is reminiscent of Marcus Borg’s: provocative, compelling, transformative.

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Pádraig Ó Tuama’s interests lie in language, violence, and religion. Having grown up in a place that has a long history of all three (Ireland, yes, but also Europe) he finds that language might be the most redeeming of all three of these. In language, there is the possibility of vulnerability, of surprise, of the creative movement towards something as yet unseen. He is inspired by any artist of words: from Krista Tippett to Lucille Clifton; from Patrick Kavanagh to Emily Dickinson; from Lorna Goodison to Arundhati Roy. Ó Tuama loves words — words that open up the mind, the heart, the life. For instance — poem: a created thing.

As a rabbi drawn to Hasidism and Kabbalah, and a practitioner of Perennial Wisdom found at the mystic heart of all religions, Rabbi Rami Shapiro’s message is simple: Alles iz Gott: everything is a manifesting of God. He is inspired by anyone who dares to step outside the safety of sacred opinion to experience and perhaps utter Truth beyond “ism” and ideology. Love is a reaction to images we hold of others rather than to the others themselves. With this in mind, Shapiro prefers to meet others as they are rather than love them as he imagines them to be.

The Rev. Kirk Whalum believes that music is the language that communicates across borders. Music can break and enter into a person’s soul. The difference is a musician is not there to take; he’s there to give, to leave something. Whalum’s saxophone style blends his Memphis roots with Houston nightclubs and Parisian concert halls. When not on tour, he serves on the faculty of the Visible Music College in Memphis.

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