(RNS) — The Rev. Yolanda Pierce, dean of Howard College College of Divinity and a public theologian, has been named the following dean of Vanderbilt Divinity College.
Her appointment is efficient July 1, pending approval by the Vanderbilt College Board of Belief.
Pierce, who additionally has been a professor of faith at Howard College since 2017, is to succeed Emilie Townes, who grew to become the primary African American dean of the divinity faculty in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2013. Vanderbilt introduced final yr that Townes would step down as of June 30 and would return to a college position in 2024 after a analysis depart.
“Throughout the search course of, Yolanda Pierce stood out for her excellent nationwide management on the intersection of faith and public life,” stated Vanderbilt Provost C. Cybele Raver in an announcement. “She is the perfect candidate to proceed Emilie Townes’ pathbreaking work in what we boldly name ‘Schola Prophetarum,’ College of the Prophets — getting ready our college students to be Twenty first-century ministers, academics and group leaders in a difficult world.”
Based mostly on the Affiliation of Theological Colleges’ database that dates to 2007, “this is able to characterize the primary time that two African-American or Black girls in a row have been known as to guide an ATS faculty,” Chris A. Meinzer, the COO and senior director of ATS, instructed Faith Information Service.
Pierce, a scholar of African American spiritual historical past and womanist theology, has taught on the College of Kentucky and Princeton Theological Seminary, the place she was the founding director of its Middle for Black Church Research. She additionally was the inaugural director of the Middle for the Examine of African American Spiritual Life on the Smithsonian’s Nationwide Museum of African American Historical past and Tradition.
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Throughout her tenure as the primary lady to guide the predominantly Black theological faculty at Howard College, Pierce launched a chaplaincy/medical pastoral schooling program that’s licensed by the Affiliation for Medical Pastoral Training and moved its residential physician of ministry program on-line.
“I’m honored and excited for the chance to change into dean of Vanderbilt Divinity College, an innovator in Twenty first-century theological schooling, and to work with devoted school and workers within the preparation of excellent ministers and students,” Pierce stated in an announcement. “I’ve lengthy heard in regards to the faculty’s wealthy historical past as an advocate for racial and social justice, and I sit up for constructing on the sturdy basis that Emilie Townes and others have established to kind this treasured group.”
Pierce, the writer of the 2021 e-book “In My Grandmother’s Home: Black Ladies, Religion, and the Tales We Inherit,” has sought to show a extra expansive view of theology.
“If the one theology we have now is (Martin) Luther or (John) Calvin, then we’re lacking how God strikes in a world for a bunch of people that don’t know Luther or Calvin, won’t ever learn (their) work nor have an interest within the 1500s by which they lived,” she instructed Faith Information Service on the time of the discharge of that e-book. “So I’m actually making an attempt to shift the discourse about who can do theology and what counts as theological supply materials.”
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