Duke Divinity School will hold a Service of the Word with the 2024 Martin Luther King Jr. guest lecturer, Dr. Josef Sorett, preaching.

Sorett serves as dean of Columbia College, the Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor and Vice President for Undergraduate Education at Columbia University. As an interdisciplinary scholar of religion and race in the Americas, and a professor of religion, African American, and African diaspora studies, Sorett employs primarily historical and literary approaches to the study of religion in Black communities and cultures in the United States, straddling the disciplines of history, literature, religion, art, and music.

His first book, Spirit in the Dark: A Religious History of Racial Aesthetics, illuminates how religion has figured in debates about Black art and culture across the 20th century. In addition to editing the recently released volume, The Sexual Politics of Black Churches, Sorett’s second book, Black is a Church: Christianity and the Contours of African American Life, was published in 2023. He is working on a third, There’s a God on the Mic: Hip Hop’s (Surprising) Religious History.

Duke Faculty, staff, and students can watch a recording of the service on Panopto