White House Staffer and World Food Prize Laureate to Keynote Princeton Seminary Conference on Faith and Public Life

PRINCETON, N.J., March 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Joshua DuBois, special assistant to President Obama and executive director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World and a World Food Prize Laureate, will be keynote speakers at Princeton Theological Seminary's March 10–12, 2011, Institute for Faith and Public Life. The institute will address the theme "Turning the World Upside Down: Modeling Jesus' Example," referring to a description of the early followers of Jesus as "turning the world upside down" in Acts 17.

The institute will focus on faith and social transformation, according to Gabriel Salguero, a director of the Seminary's School of Christian Vocation and Mission, which is sponsoring the event. "It is ideal for people with a passion for social change, and who want to support the transformation that faith can make in the public sphere," he says.

Beckmann will speak at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 10, 2011, and DuBois will speak at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, March 11, 2011, both in Miller Chapel on the Seminary campus.

In his capacity in the Obama White House, DuBois helps direct the administration's engagement of faith-based and other nonprofit groups. One of President Obama's longest-serving aides, he was previously director of religious affairs for the Obama for America Campaign, and was a legislative aide to then-Senator Obama. He also served as an associate pastor at a small Pentecostal church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a graduate of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and of Boston College.

Beckmann is one of the foremost U.S. advocates for hungry and poor people. A Lutheran pastor, he has been president of Bread for the World since 1991, leading large-scale and successful campaigns to strengthen U.S. political commitment to overcome hunger and poverty both nationally and globally. He founded and serves as president of the Alliance to End Hunger, which engages diverse U.S. institutions, Muslim and Jewish groups, corporations, universities, and unions in building the political will to end hunger.

The institute offers three tracks: Introduction to Faith and Public Life, Community Organizing/Prophetic Social Witness, and Hunger and Poverty. Individual workshop topics include Preaching and Prophetic Social Criticism, How to Develop a 501©3, How to Develop Advocacy Organizations, and The Church and Food Programs, among others.

Workshop leaders include Adam Taylor, vice president of advocacy for World Vision; Mark Toulouse, principal of Emmanuel College and historian of religion and culture; Michael Livingston, director of the National Council of Churches Poverty Initiative; Kate Ott, deputy director of the Religious Institute; Jacqueline Lewis, senior minister of Middle Collegiate Church in New York City; Lisa Harper, executive director of New York Faith and Justice; Peter Paris, emeritus professor of Christian social ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary; Hak Joon Lee, associate professor of theology and ethics at New Brunswick Theological Seminary; and Salguero.

For more information about the program and the schedule, or to register, go to www3.ptsem.edu/Offices/ConEd/faithandpubliclife or call 609.497.7990.

Princeton Theological Seminary was founded in 1812, the first seminary established by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. It is the largest Presbyterian Seminary in the country, with more than 500 students in six graduate degree programs.

SOURCE Princeton Theological Seminary