Let Us Now Praise the Peculiar People (video)

Posted on September 17, 2026 by PLT Staff

On Sunday, June 28, 2026, PLT Director Charles Marsh spoke on the theme “Let Us Now Praise the Peculiar People” in the historic John M. Hall Auditorium at Bay View Chautauqua in Petoskey, Michigan. Clustering around the story of his visit to the grave of Fannie Lou Hamer in the summer of 1993, Marsh invited listeners to consider what it might mean to inhabit the present faithfully: to live with courage and compassion, and to bear the distinctive witness of a people called to hope.

The sermon kicked off the week-long lecture series “On The Grace to Begin Again,” which ran from June 28 through July 2.

The nonprofit Bay View Association was founded as part of the Chautauqua movement, which established adult education programs across the nation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Bay View’s own history traces the movement’s origins to post–Civil War hopes for national spiritual renewal and widened educational opportunities for rural Americans. Although many Chautauquas closed during the Great Depression, Bay View remains among the seventeen that survive and that observe the four traditional pillars of the Chautauqua—education, the arts, religion, and recreation.

  • Video Information
  • Date Recorded:June 28, 2026
  • Location Recorded:Bay View, Petoskey, Michigan
This video is published by the Project on Lived Theology (PLT). For any questions related to its use, please contact PLT (https://www.livedtheology.org//contact/). Copy available for use subject to Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution required, Non-Commercial use, No Derivatives, 3.0, Unported).