Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou Biography
Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou (@revsekou) is an author, documentary filmmaker, public
intellectual, organizer, pastor and theologian. He currently serves as the Pastor for Formation and
Justice at the First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain, Boston, MA.
Sekou was Scholar in Residence at Stanford University’s Martin Luther King Education and
Research Institute in 2014 before going to Ferguson in mid-August on behalf of the Fellowship
of Reconciliation (the country’s oldest interfaith peace organization) to assist with organizing
efforts alongside local and national groups.
He is the author of two collections of essays: ‘urbansouls’, a meditation on working with at-risk
youth in Saint Louis, hip hop and religion and ’Gods, Gays, and Guns: Essays on Religion and
the Future of Democracy’, as well as the forthcoming ‘Riot Music: British Hip Hop, Race, and
the Politics of Meaning’.
Rev. Sekou has served as Special Assistant on social justice to the Bishop for the Church of God
in Christ, New York, as Senior Community Minister at New York’s Judson Memorial Church,
and as Social Justice Minister at Middle Collegiate Church.
He was a fellow-in-residence at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, and as Ella Baker
Fellow at New York Theological Seminary's Micah Institute he served as a strategist organizing
clergy for economic justice in New York City. The Reverend served on the 2004 National
Political Hip Hop Convention Platform Committee, and was Senior Adviser on Urban Public
Policy for the 2004 Kucinich Presidential campaign.
Following Hurricane Katrina, Rev. Sekou moved to New Orleans, founding the local Interfaith
Worker Justice Center. In 2006, the Institute for Policy Studies appointed Sekou its first
Associate Fellow in Religion and Justice.
He is a founding national coordinator for Clergy and Laity Concerned about Iraq (CALC-I),
which represented over 300 faith-based institutions and organizations. In 2006, CALC-I led a
civil disobedience at the White House at which 370 people were arrested including sixty
religious leaders.
In 2011, he received the Keeper of the Flame Award from the National Voting Rights Institute
and Museum in Selma, AL.
Rev. Sekou has lectured widely, including at Harvard Divinity School, Princeton University,
University of Virginia, University of Paris IV - La Sorbonne and Vanderbilt University, and is a
Professor of Preaching at the Seminary Consortium of Urban Pastoral Education in the Graduate
Theological Urban Studies Program, Chicago, IL.