Harvard Chaplain to Tell Stories of Slavery at WFU
The Rev. Claudia Ann Highbaugh, chaplain and associate director of ministerial studies at Harvard Divinity School, will speak Wednesday, Nov. 5, at Wake Forest University.
Highbaugh will present a lecture titled “The Stories of Our Lives” at 8 p.m. in the Scales Fine Arts Center, Room 102. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Based on stories about slavery, Highbaugh’s lecture will explore themes of survival, hope, spirituality, community and more. The stories are intended to help young people understand their past while building their futures.
“What I’m going to do is a presentation to the community that will help them look at stories as a way to articulate legend, myth and history,” she said. “It is my thesis that one way to teach children history is to really give them true history in the form of stories.”
Highbaugh will also present a lecture titled “Our Journey of Faith: The Power of Prayer” at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 4, in the third-floor rotunda of Wake Forest’s Benson University Center as part of its “Discovery Series” of lunch-time lectures.
As a child growing up in inner-city Chicago, Highbaugh said that her own historical education largely ignored slavery. “Now there are true histories that cite what really happened,” she said. “The children’s stories highlight and give black children tools for building their own futures and for understanding their own historical backgrounds.”
Highbaugh, an ordained minister of the Christian Church (United Disciples of Christ), is visiting Wake Forest University as one of its resident scholars for the university’s 1997-98 Year of Religion in American Life.
She is known as an advocate for children’s rights and the need for youth to form a strong spiritual basis for their faith, leadership and service to their communities. She has served as a delegate to the National Council of Churches Governing Board, a founding member and co-chair of the Caucus for Disciple Women Clergy, a member of the General Board and Administrative Committee of the Christian Church, and a member of the Commission on Ministry in both the Pacific Southwest and in the Northeast regions of the Christian Church.
Highbaugh is also a board member of the Boston Area United Ministries in Higher Education, the Women’s Theological Center, and the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life.
She received her bachelor’s degree in English from Hiram College in 1972 and her master of divinity and doctor of ministry degrees in 1978 and 1985 from the School of Theology at Claremont.
