Date: April 4, 2025
This week we commemorate the martyrdom of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. King was assassinated while participating in a campaign to support sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968. The Civil Rights Movement, including the Poor People’s Campaign that VTS supported by offering two of our dorms for hospitality to participants the same year, has always had worker justice as a part of its capacious vision.
It’s fitting, therefore, that on April 6 and 7 we host a Faith and Labor Summit organized by Virginians Organized for Interfaith and Community Engagement (VOICE). VTS is a member of VOICE. We rejoined this year thanks to the leadership of students and faculty and with the support of the Saint Nicholas Center for Faith and Justice. The gathering of one hundred faith and labor leaders includes training and relationship building. A cohort of five students and faculty will participate.
Please welcome these guests to our campus. It’s an honor to host them as we continue to live into the dream of Martin Luther King.
The Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, Ph.D.
Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary and President of The General Theological SeminaryÂ