Schedule of Events | Contact Information | Black Church Studies

A NEW VISION:
BLACK CHURCH STUDIES

Black Church Studies is an academic field that espouses linking divine justice and social justice in development of excellence and leadership in the academy, church, and community. Towards this end, it is the mission of the emerging Black Church Studies (BCS) program at Brite Divinity School to provide an excellent teaching learning context for shaping ministerial preparation and theological reflection for seminarians of all races and backgrounds.

Our vision is for future church leaders and scholars to gain wider knowledge of, deeper appreciation for, and increased sensitivity to the issues and exigencies of the Black Christian tradition within American society as illustrated within its teachings of freedom, justice, and equality. This academic and programmatic enterprise
will involve:

• connecting religious experience with cultural theory in order to study the role of Black congregational experience as integral to American Christianity and African traditional retentions;

• creating inter/intracommunal dialogues that forge bonds of communication between scholars, churches and community activist organizations;

• offering international, national, and regional immersion trips to study, and participate in the traditions, values, mores, and rituals within the Pan-African/Black religious experience;

• equipping ordained and lay leaders in order to work collaboratively with the Black community in the task of Christian ministry, social change, and justice; and

• affording seminarians opportunities to earn a Black Church Studies Certificate, which introduces a critical component of theological education that contextualizes the cultural diversity of American religious life as espoused by the Black Church tradition.