A Pasadena Pulpit for Justice: Fuller Seminary’s MLK Commemoration Invites Elders to Tell Their Stories

The Wednesday after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a Pasadena seminary will turn its chapel over to a different kind of sermon: the stories of community elders who have spent decades pursuing justice in the neighborhoods where they live.

Fuller Theological Seminary’s William E. Pannell Center for Black Church Studies, in partnership with the Center for Restorative Justice, will host its 2026 MLK Commemoration on January 21-22. The two-day event, titled “Narratives of Justice,” opens with a chapel service on Wednesday, January 21, at 10 a.m. in Travis Auditorium, where Dr. Phil Allen will deliver the keynote address.

Allen, a Pannell Center Fellow and PhD candidate in Christian Ethics at Fuller, researches the intersection of theology, ethics, race, and culture, with a particular focus on the theology and ethics of Martin Luther King Jr. He is founder of the Racial Solidarity Project, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit, and author of “The Prophetic Lens: The Camera and Black Moral Agency from MLK to Darnella Frazier,” published in 2022.

The second day shifts from pulpit to table. On Thursday, January 22, from 6 to 8 p.m., a dinner and panel discussion will gather respected elders from the community to share their perspectives on justice in Pasadena and Greater Los Angeles.

The Pannell Center, which bears the name of the late Rev. Dr. William E. Pannell, has anchored Black church leadership training at Fuller since 1974, when it began as the Theological Studies Program for Black Ministers. The center was renamed in Pannell’s honor in 2015. Pannell, who died in October 2024 at age 95, was Fuller’s first Black trustee when he joined the board in 1971 and later served on the faculty for 40 years.

Fuller, led by President David Emmanuel Goatley—the seminary’s sixth president and first Black president since his January 2023 inauguration—continues its tradition of MLK commemorations that connect academic theology to lived experience.

Travis Auditorium is located at 180 N. Oakland Ave., Pasadena. Free parking is available at 179 N. Madison Ave.