A Jesuit priest and professor of history, John Staudenmaier will give a lecture and present the annual William Stringfellow Lecture in Justice and Peace at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 30, in Chase Hall Lounge, Chase Hall, 56 Campus Ave., Bates College. Sponsored by the Office of the Chaplain, the talk and a potluck dinner that begins at 6 p.m. is open to the public free of charge. Call 207-786-8272 for more information.

Long engaged with issues of peace and justice and their connection with the life and spirit of the mind, Staudenmaier will give a lecture titled, “A Place in the World: Social Action Depends on Location.” Internal and external choices about where and how we locate ourselves “give us starting points for committed action in the world,” Staudenmaier says. “At the same time, and just as important, these locations help to shape our moral imagination. Place matters.”

The lecture honors the legacy of William Stringfellow, Bates class of 1949, a lawyer and lay theologian prominent in the American peace movement, and coincides with the 2005 William Stringfellow Awards for Justice and Peace, to be presented this year to Bates senior Ryan Conrad of Middletown, R.I., and Auburn resident Mark Schlotterbeck, city missionary at Calvary United Methodist Church.

Acting dean of the College of Liberal Arts and professor of history at the University of Detroit Mercy, Staudenmaier is visiting scholar at the Center for Science, Technology and Society at Santa Clara University in California. He edits Technology and Culture, an acclaimed international quarterly dedicated to the historical study of technology and its relations with politics, economics, labor, business, the environment, public policy, science and the arts.

Schlotterbeck grew up in the village of Lewisburg, Ohio, nurtured, he says, “by family, friends and a good church that had a place for kids and encouraged young people to try their wings.” Schlotterbeck has spent his adult life in U.S. cities working with churches, prisoners and their families, laid-off workers, immigrants and downtown residents.

In 2002-03, Schlotterbeck was prominently involved in creating the Many & One Coalition to assert that all people should be welcome and safe in our communities. Schlotterbeck has served as an African Methodist Episcopal Zion associate minister and as a Mennonite jail chaplain, pastor and church planter.

He holds a master of divinity degree from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary and was trained at the Inner City Clinical Pastoral Education program in Cincinnati and the Urban Theology Unit in Sheffield, England. He was ordained in the Mennonite Church but has adopted a “No queer, no me” position regarding religious bodies that refuse ordination on the basis of sexual orientation.

In various settings, Schlotterbeck has used music to help children and grown-ups celebrate, reach across lines of faith and culture and commemorate experiences from the joy of birth to the ravages of AIDS.

Involved in service and social justice work for many years, Bates senior Conrad will graduate this May with a degree in interdisciplinary studies that focuses on political science and performance art. An organizer at Bates of the New World Coalition, the Maine Fair Trade Campaign and the Maine People’s Alliance, Conrad is one of four 2004-05 Bates College Student Volunteers, matching fellow students with volunteer opportunities in Lewiston, Auburn and nearby communities. Conrad works with the Greene-based JED collective, a group of organizers, activists, farmers and artists working for social, ecological and economic justice.

A member of Bates theater professor and artist William Pope.L’s “Black Factory Tour 2005,” Conrad staffs the traveling performance art installation that focuses on racial difference and art in a playful way as it pushes for significant social change. Conrad participates in the Recycle-a-Bike program at the Lewiston Area Time Dollars Center, on Howe Street, where he and fellow bike enthusiasts teach young children about bike repair and maintenance, along with green energy and the ecological impact of using automobiles.

Family physician and author David Hilfiker will present the annual William Stringfellow Lecture in Justice and Peace at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 31, in Chase Hall Lounge, Chase Hall, 56 Campus Avenue.

The lecture honors the legacy of William Stringfellow, Bates class of 1949, a lawyer and lay theologian prominent in the American peace movement, and coincides with the 2004 William Stringfellow Awards for Justice and Peace, to be presented this year to Bates junior Gregory Rosenthal of Schenectady, N.Y., and the members of the Greene-based Maine Center for Justice, Ecology and Democracy (JED).

Hilfiker’s Stringfellow Lecture follows a talk he will give earlier in the day, Inward Journey, Outward Journey: A Physician’s Story of Accompanying and Being Accompanied by the Poor, at 4:30 p.m. in Skelton Lounge, Chase Hall. Part of the series “Spiritual Journeys: Stories of the Soul 2003-04.” Sponsored by the Office of the Chaplain, both events are open to the public free of charge. Call 207-786-8272 for more information.

Founder of  the Washington, D.C.-based Joseph House for formerly homeless men living with HIV/AIDS, Hilfiker, gives his Stringfellow presentation, The Triumph of Hope Over Fear, at 6:30 p.m.

“A fear of the poor, of the alien, of the ‘other,’ runs through our nation. It separates us from our own selves as well as from others and leaves us at the mercy of powers we do not fully understand,” Hilfiker says. “Solidarity with the marginalized, on the other hand, is a profound invitation to the spiritual life. It offers us an upside-down view that begins gradually to make sense. It offers us hope.”

A family practitioner who practiced for seven years in a rural Minnesota clinic and 10 years at Community of Hope Health Services, an urban clinic in Washington, D.C., Hilfiker and his family lived for five years at Christ House, a 34-bed medical recovery shelter for homeless men that he helped to found. In 1990, he left Christ House to found Joseph House, where he, as medical and finance director, and his family lived with the home’s residents for three years.

No longer active in medical practice, Hilfiker works toward the creation of a just society through his writing and speaking. In December 2002, he spent three weeks in Iraq and has since written and lectured about the invasion of that country.

The author of Healing the Wounds (Pantheon, 1985) and Not All of Us Are Saints (Hill & Wang, 1994), Hilfiker’s latest book is Urban Justice: How Ghettos Happen (Seven Stories Press, 2002).

JED is a group of activists, organizers, farmers and artists working for social, ecological and economic justice on both local and global scales. Based since fall 2001 at the Clark Mountain Sanctuary in Greene, the group operates a small organic farm and lives in a way that ties political activism to sustainability and ecology. JED-supported projects and organizations during the last two years include Lots to Gardens of Downtown Lewiston, Maine Solidarity Delegation to Brazil 2003, the Many and One Coalition, the Lewiston Time Dollar Network and the Maine Fair Trade Campaign.

Before transferring to Bates College as a sophomore, Gregory Rosenthal spent one year at the California Institute of Art studying music composition and uncovering connections between Taoism and music, sound and listening. At Bates, Rosenthal has continued this exploration with Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Gina Fatone. He will travel to China in fall 2004 to continue this study.

Since arriving at Bates, Rosenthal has learned to practice Buddhist meditation and to renew Judaism in his life. Bates has also introduced Rosenthal to community service, social justice and political activism.  In early March, he designated a tree on the historic quadrangle as “The Tree of Peace” and asked members of the Bates community to leave religious objects or other symbols at its base in remembrance of those who have died in the war in Iraq. A member of the New World Coalition and the Environmental Coalition, Rosenthal performs with the Bates gamelan ensemble, an Indonesian instrumental group, and Northfield, a shape-note singing group.

Given by the Office of the Chaplain at Bates, the William Stringfellow Awards annually recognize the achievement of a Maine citizen and of a Bates College student who have dedicated their lives and work to the promotion of peace and justice.

Like Stringfellow himself, award winners are distinguished by their courageous and sustained commitment to redressing the root causes of violence and social injustice and to engaging and opposing “the powers and principalities of this world,” as Stringfellow described them.