Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou

Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou is considered one of the foremost religious leaders of his generation. In 2006, The Institute for Policy Studies, the nation's oldest multi-issue progressive think tank in Washington, DC, recognized his work as public scholar, appointing him as the first associate fellow in religion and justice.

Rev. Sekou was the founding national coordinator for Clergy and Laity Concerned About Iraq that represents over 300 faith-based institutions and organizations around the country working to end the war and occupation in Iraq. On September 26, 2006, they led a civil disobedience action at The White House opposing the war and occupation of Iraq. Over 370 people were arrested, including 60 religious leaders.

In response to the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina, Rev. Sekou moved to New Orleans for six months and founded the Interfaith Worker Justice Center for New Orleans, opening a worker's rights legal clinic and working with organizing labor toward the unionization of the hotel workers. He previously served as co-coordinator of the Democracy Action Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, that has trained a multi-racial group of youth activists from around the country. He also served on a platform committee for the National Political Hip Hop Convention. Rev. Osagyefo led the effort to organize 18- to 24-year-olds and served as senior advisor on urban public policy for the Kucinich for President 2004 Campaign.

Rev. Sekou is a professor of preaching at the Seminary Consortium of Urban Pastoral Education in the Graduate Theological Urban Studies Program in Chicago. He is a third-generation Pentecostal minister and the special assistant to the Bishop of New York Southeastern District of the Church of God in Christ. He has served as youth pastor in the inner cities of Saint Louis, Atlanta, and Washington, DC.

He authored the critically acclaimed Urbansouls, which takes a refreshing approach to the spiritual crisis in America as well as hip hop, religion, homophobia, sexism, race, and politics. Cornel West penned the preface, writing: "Rev. Sekou has the most in depth and concise analysis of youth that I have ever heard." He also the author of Gods, Gays, and Guns: Essays on Religion and Democracy (Campbell and Cannon Press, 2011) and the forthcoming Riot Music: British Hip Hop, Race, and the Politics of Meaning (Hamilton Books, 2012), which explores the London riots. Currently, Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou is a senior community minister at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village.