Please note that a site which will contain some of Rev. Dr. Roberts's unpublished lecture, sermon, meditation, and workshop notes has been established at www.drsamuelroberts.net. Thank you.

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The Rev. Dr. Samuel Kelton Roberts, Sr. of New York, NY; Richmond, VA; and most recently Columbia, MD, passed into eternal rest on Tuesday, February 24, 2015, following a brief illness but a much longer life of service as a preacher and minister, theologian, ethicist, historian of religion, and mentor. Born to Hattie Harper Roberts and the Rev. Foster Roberts on September 1, 1944, in Muskogee, OK, Samuel was called to the ministry at the age of 16, and in the summer of his seventeenth year preached his first sermon, at Jerusalem Baptist Church, where his father had been pastor until his death in 1955. Samuel graduated from the Manual Training High School in 1962, and graduated in 1967 from Morehouse College (Atlanta, GA), where he joined the Alpha Phi Alpha service fraternity, majored in English, and spent a year in France on a Merrill Travel and Study Grant, receiving a diploma in French Studies at the Université de Lyon in 1966 During his time at Morehouse, Samuel was apprenticed to the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, Pastor of Atlanta’s West Hunter Baptist Church, and lieutenant to Civil Rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Roberts also began a courtship with Valerie Hermoine Fisher, daughter of Geraldine Garrett Fisher and the Rev. Albert Franklin Fisher, who had pastored West Hunter until his death in the 1950s, and who, like Samuel would a few years later, had earned a divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The two married on June 1, 1968 (ceremony performed by Rev. Abernathy, at West Hunter) soon after Valerie’s graduation from Bryn Mawr College. The two remained together for twenty-eight years, separating amicably.

Roberts continued his religious and scholarly training in New York City, taking a Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in 1970. Between 1970 and 1973, Roberts was a minister at the Congregational Church of South Hempstead (South Hempstead, NY), while also working to complete a PhD from Columbia University in 1974. Subsequent academic faculty positions included those at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (1973-76) and Union Theological Seminary (1976-1980). In 1980 he was invited to join the faculty of Virginia Union University, in Richmond, as Dean of the College. This position he held for five years before returning to teaching and pastoring the Garland Avenue Baptist Church (Richmond, 1986-1996). Samuel’s life of service in Richmond included extensive ministerial and charitable work, membership in the Virginia Interfaith Center, and Board membership and other positions in the Young Men’s Christian Association of the USA.

For fifteen years, between 1986 and 2001, he held the title of Professor of Christian Ethics at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology, Virginia Union University, and was Director of its Doctor of Ministry Program from 1994 to 2001. In 2001, he joined the Union Presbyterian Seminary as the Anne Borden and E. Hervey Evans Professor of Theology and Ethics. In the summer of 2014 he retired from academic teaching, but not from his life of service and faith which he maintained until his final days. Dr. Roberts’s published books included African American Christian Ethics (Pilgrim Press, 2001); Born to Preach: Essays in Honor of the Ministry of Henry and Ella Mitchell, editor, (Judson Press, 2000); In the Path of Virtue: The African American Moral Tradition (Pilgrim Press, 1999); The Expanded Mission of ‘Old First’ Churches (co-authored with Raymond J. Bakke, Judson Press, 1986), which was reprinted in 1998 as The Expanded Mission of Center City Churches (International Associates, 1998).

Dr. Samuel Kelton Roberts is survived by Rose Robinson (his wife since 2010), Joyce Roberts Jones (his sister), Samuel Jr. and Franklin (his sons), Zaire Graves (granddaughter), Deidre Jones (niece), Deidre’s sons (Khalil and Desmond), and his loving church family of First Baptist Church of Vienna, Virginia. 

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This memorial website was created in memory of the Lord's servant and our beloved father, grandfather, uncle, brother, and husband, Rev. Dr. Samuel Kelton Roberts. He was born on September 1, 1944, in Muskogee, OK, and passed away on February 24, 2015, in Baltimore, MD, at the age of 70. We will remember him forever.

This site is a work in progress. You are invited to post here any fond remembrance or tribute. Please note that we are currently organizing Rev. Dr. Roberts's personal and professional archive. We have established a site which contains some of his unpublished lecture, sermon, meditation, and workshop notes (at www.drsamuelroberts.net). We are also collecting photographs, program bulletins, letters, etc. If you would like to share copies or originals with the family, please contact Samuel Jr. at samuel.k.roberts@gmail.com.

Thank you,
the family