An article in Religion News Service describes the four-day intensive course on Religious Freedom for black graduate students of religion—part of a partnership between Virginia Union University Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology and the Religious Freedom Center, a nonpartisan initiative of the Freedom Forum Institute (Newseum). The partnership seeks to help students learn more about the country’s diverse range of views on religious freedom.

As former religious freedom ambassador Suzan Johnson Cook stood before a class of black theological students, one raised his hand to ask her if it had been challenging to work with atheists and agnostics.

“It’s not about what I believe or what I think you should believe,” responded Johnson Cook, the first African-American and clergyperson in the State Department post. “It’s about you have the right to believe or not believe.”

Gathered Tuesday (Jan. 8) around five round tables in a studio of the Newseum, 35 students from religious graduate schools at historically black colleges and universities attended the first session of a four-day intensive class on religious freedom. They were there to learn the lessons and lingo of a field that has traditionally been predominated by white men. The new pilot course is part of a partnership with the theological school of Virginia Union University and the Religious Freedom Center, a nonpartisan initiative of the Freedom Forum Institute.

The three-year program is funded by a $450,000 grant from the Luce Fund for Theological Education.

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