Churches must be able to navigate forced changes like those brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Restrictions related to the pandemic impacted churches' abilities to provide needed support services to the African American community, including African American women, who shoulder tremendous challenges. Few studies report the views of African…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how exposure to fundamentalist teachings of Scripture in Black churches influenced the faith formation of Black American Christians. I interviewed nine participants aged 40 and over who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, or queer (LGBTQ). My findings were the following six themes: (1)…

Christian African American women in leadership have unique lived experiences. Although God calls women to lead, they often meet challenges in ministry and the marketplace. Developing into a great woman in leadership requires intentionality and preparation. This study explored the perceptions and perspectives of Christian African American women in…

My article 'The Sounded-Word Aesthetics' explores the ways that Black girls make spirit felt as found in the music created in Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT). SOLHOT is a collective space of organizing with Black girls to celebrate Black girlhood. Using personal narrative alongside black feminist, womanist, and black girlhood…

The purpose of this article is to explore suburban Black Christian girls' experiences of microaggressions in the public high school context. Through an ethnographic study, personal narratives were collected from six suburban Black Christian girls who all attended the same African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church where I served as the youth…

While Fiji was a British colony, in the early twentieth century, education to Indigenous Fijians was delivered by missions including the Methodist Overseas Mission of Australasia. As argued here, education delivery was influenced by policies for African Americans. Policies from Tuskegee Institute in the American South were transposed to Nausori,…

This dissertation investigates the leadership experiences of African America women employed at historically White Christian colleges and universities. The study engages the narratives of African American women who are leaders within these institutions. The findings of the study illuminate intersectionality and the challenges the double-bind of…

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of using information and communication technology (ICT) in the Black worship experience for recruiting and retaining young adults in relation to church services, engagement (defined in this study as communication, community outreach, social activism and collaboration, and support services), and…

Dr. Calvin Otis Butts, III is a towering figure in both the Black Church and in higher education. Dr. Butts is the only Black faith-based social activist to have led a famed house of worship and a respected public university concurrently for over two decades. Dr. Butts is the Pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church and was the longest-serving…

The way faith is formed depends upon the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. Faith formation cannot happen in a vacuum. It is shaped and informed by all that is happening. In our time, the COVID-19 pandemic is happening. In this essay I reflect on faith formation amid the zeitgeist of the Coronavirus, considering ways that the pandemic requires…

"Resisting Divide-and-Conquer Strategies in Education: Pathways and Possibilities" examines the ways in which divide-and-conquer strategies operate in the American public education system. In U.S. education, these mechanisms are endemic and enduring, if not always evident. Coordinated, strategic, well-funded, politically-viable campaigns…

In this manuscript, we revisit data from a 9-month ethnographic study that examined whiteness in early childhood. Specifically, the study explored the epistemological and ontological reality of three young white children and how they learned to conflate ethnocentric love with whitewashed justice through the lens of their religious upbringing. We…

The article draws on critiques in political theory and morality to argue that womanism, a worldview rooted in Black women's lives and history, provides an alternative conceptual framework to prevailing Eurocentric thinking, for promoting socially just institutions of higher education. Presupposing a positioned, encultured, and embodied account of…

How do race and lived experiences of this construct impact student theological understandings? We embarked on a joint pedagogical venture spanning two continents about race and theology with groups of students whose encounters with race and its impacts on theology were markedly different--including students whose lives and education have been…