ENGAGE Program
Together students will explore the contemporary call to racial justice and healing, the histories of both the church and the U.S. Civil Rights movement, and what it means to live a life of Christian leadership and service.
Students will spend seven days on Lipscomb’s campus, studying theology, Scripture, and history with Lipscomb professors and immersing themselves in the spiritual, cultural, historic, and entertainment opportunities available in the great city of Nashville.
Students will spend another three days traveling outside of Nashville on the “Bus Ride to Justice,” a historical and interactive tour of various sites and memorials of the U.S. Civil Rights movement, including:
- The Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum
- The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL
- The Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma
- A walking tour of Montgomery and the State Capitol
- The Equal Justice Initiative's Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice
- The Tuskegee Human and Civil Rights Multicultural Center
- Students will also have the chance to meet Dr. Fred D. Gray, legendary civil rights leader and attorney. He represented clients in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1965 Selma March, the desegregation of Alabama public schools, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Bus Ride To Justice
The “Bus Ride to Justice” travel course adds a unique element of experiential learning to the ENGAGE initiative. Students will spend three days touring significant sites of the U.S. Civil Rights movement throughout Alabama. Each stop immerses students, counselors, and faculty in intergenerational conversations rooted in that past struggle and challenges learners to think about the work that remains in our society. One former graduate student who experienced the trip writes: “I was unprepared for the depth of emotional response, personal soul-searching and corporate reflection which this field trip invited [us] to enter into.”
This particular model of learning moves participants to consider their own responses to racial injustice as they stand in the physical spaces of past events and allow the voices and faces of history to inform and frame their actions for the future. The journey intends to prompt students to ask thoughtful, theological questions concerning the mistreatment of all oppressed peoples, using cross-cultural dialogue and intergenerational, non-violent engagement.