Ndungane to be Featured Speaker at annual Martin Luther King Jr. Lectures
March 7, 2005
As leader of the Anglican Communion in southern Africa, Archbishop Ndungane oversees 23 dioceses with more than 900 parishes in South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Angola, and other nations. Appointed archbishop in 1996, Ndungane is known as an outspoken advocate against injustice, inadequate education, economic oppression and violence both in southern Africa and across the world.
He has been a leader in the campaign to control the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa and has called for debt relief for impoverished nations. Last fall, he spoke at the United Nations to launch the Micah Challenge, an international Christian movement to cut world poverty in half by 2015.
A fourth-generation Anglican priest, Ndungane decided to enter the ministry in the early 1960s while serving a three-year sentence as a political prisoner on the notorious Robben Island. He was ordained in 1974 in the Diocese of Cape Town and has a B.Div. and M.Th. from King’s College, London. Before his appointment as archbishop, he served as Bishop of Kimberley and Kuruman in South Africa.
Sponsored by the Office of Black Church Studies and the Black Seminarians Union, the King Lectures have brought leading preachers and scholars to Duke and Durham since the early 1970s. Featured lecturers typically are engaged in ministries that affect civic life or are at the forefront of efforts to change church ministry or both.
On April 6, selected local pastors and church leaders will be invited to attend a daytime continuing education seminar in which the Archbishop will share a presentation about the state of the church in South Africa given the current socio-political landscape. This event will begin at 10 a.m. and conclude at 3 p.m.
Ndungane will preach in York Chapel at 10 a.m. on April 7 and present the King lecture at 2:30 p.m in the divinity school’s York Chapel. The lecture will focus on "Paradigms for Community-Building in the Global Church: A South African Perspective." Faculty are invited to bring classes to this important event.
For more details, contact the Office of Black Church Studies, 919-660-3444.