Effective Monday, Tyler said, the center’s activities will be part of BJC’s programming. The center will formally end its corporate status later this year. The operations of the center, which previously were housed at a library at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, have already moved to the BJC, with Dent being hired on Feb. 1.
Dent said board members, many of whom are former or current leaders at theological schools, will become advisers to the center when the transition is complete.
Interim Dean Corey D.B. Walker of Wake Forest University School of Divinity, one of those board members, said he expects the new arrangement will lead to expanding work by the center that will include religious and secular people and Jewish and Muslim groups as well as other Christian organizations.
“Theologically it is recognizing that the Imago Dei, the image of God, is found in all people, it is found in all cultures, and religious freedom and this acquisition enables BJC to then extend that in new and significant ways,” he said, “and to ensure that understanding is not something that’s ancillary. It is constitutive of how we continue to create a more just and humane world consistent with the vision of the gospel.”
This article originally appeared here.