The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University will sponsor a lecture by Princeton University professor Albert Raboteau on Feb. 28. The lecture, titled “Thomas Merton and Racial Reconciliation,” will be held at 7 p.m. in Frazier Hall in the Brown Activities Center on campus. Raboteau will also be a guest on State of Affairs which will be broadcast from campus.
Raboteau specializes in American religious history with a focus on American Catholic history and African American religious movements. He is the author of the book A Fire in the Bones, which includes a chapter on Merton and Martin Luther King, Jr. Other titles by Raboteau include Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South, Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans, African-American Religion, and A Sorrowful Jay.
Bellarmine University’s Thomas Merton Center is the official repository of Merton's artistic estate which includes over 1,300 photographs and 900 drawings in addition to his writing. The Center archives more than 50,000 Merton-related materials.