PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Social ethicist and American religions scholar Jonathan L. Walton will deliver the 2016 Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture on “Love, Power and Empathy in an iLife Era.” The lecture will take place on Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2016, at 6 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching, De Ciccio Family Auditorium, at Brown University.

This event is free and open to the public. Tickets can be reserved online.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture is sponsored by the Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion.

Walton is the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard University and the Pusey Minister in Harvard’s Memorial Church. He is also a professor of religion and society at the Harvard Divinity School.

Walton’s research addresses the intersections of religion, politics, and media culture. He has published widely in scholarly journals such as Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation and Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies. His book Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism (NYU Press, 2009) disrupts commonly held assumptions that associate evangelical broadcasting with white, conservative evangelical communities, while illumining the ways televangelists’ professed aims are frustrated by their hyper-mediated methods.

Walton’s work and insights have been featured in several national and international news outlets including the New York Times, CNN, and the BBC. He earned his Ph.D. and Master of Divinity degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary. The Atlanta native graduated from Morehouse College with a B.A. in political science. Walton was an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of California–Riverside prior to joining the faculty of Harvard Divinity School.