Sunday, Dec. 15 | 10:00 am | Parish Hall/Zoom -
On Sunday December 15, St. John’s will welcome back Ray Suarez at the adult forum for his 2024 Advent Reflection. In his talk this year, Ray will explore themes from his new book, We Are Home: Becoming American in the 21st Century, particularly timely in a year when immigration to America has been viewed with suspicion and fear by many Americans, and we now approach a new presidency promising radical solutions to ongoing problems. Ray wrote his new book out of the belief that the discourse around immigration has gotten badly off track and has strayed from American ideals and principles. Ray will discuss the trends in American demographics loosed by the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, and the trends in American life that led the country’s long history of taking in newcomers from around the world to become a crisis.
A St. Columba’s parishioner and good friend of St. John’s, Ray is the host of the public radio program and podcast On Shifting Ground, produced by the World Affairs Council and KQED-FM. In recent years, he has been a visiting professor of Political Science at NYU Shanghai and the John McCloy Visiting Professor of American Studies at Amherst College. Earlier in his career, Ray hosted the daily news program Inside Story from Al Jazeera America, was Chief National Correspondent for The PBS NewsHour, and hosted Talk of the Nation from NPR. He is the author of Latino Americans: The 500-Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation (2013), The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America (2005), and The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration (1999). His journalism has been recognized with two DuPont-Columbia Awards, the Ruben Salazar Award from UNIDOS-US, and UCLA’s Public Policy Leadership Award for his reporting on urban America. Please don’t miss what promises to be a timely and thought-provoking talk.
Join us in the Parish Hall or on Zoom (link: bit.ly/STJNmain)