The Liberating Theologies Speaker Series is a one-day event featuring theologians who share their radical, culture-shifting interpretations of Biblical texts. This event is an extension of our Do No Harm initiative, which works with people of faith and the broader community to shift culture and narratives that cause harm through the interpretation of sacred text and other religious writing.

About our 2020 Featured Speakers:

Bishop William J. Barber II is the President & Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival; Bishop with The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries; Visiting Professor at Union Theological Seminary; Pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church, Disciples of Christ in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and the author of four books.  Rev. Dr. Barber is also the architect of the Forward Together Moral Movement that gained national acclaim with its Moral Monday protests at the North Carolina General Assembly in 2013. Bishop Barber served as president of the North Carolina NAACP, the largest state conference in the South, from 2006 – 2017 and currently sits on the National NAACP Board of Directors. 

Dr. Emilie M. Townes, an American Baptist clergywoman, is a native of Durham, North Carolina.  She holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School and a Ph.D. in Religion in Society and Personality from Northwestern University.  Dr. Townes is the Dean and Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, becoming the first African American to serve as Dean of the Divinity School in 2013.  She is the former Andrew W. Mellon Professor of African American Religion and Theology at Yale University Divinity School and in the fall of 2005, she was the first African American woman elected to the presidential line of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and served as president in 2008. 

In addition to our featured speakers, Rev. Dr. Emilie Townes and Bishop William J. Barber II, we invite emerging theologians from across the Southeast to be a part of the experience with their most recent theological concepts. Reverend Naomi Washington-Leapheart, (topic: The Price of the Ticket: Black Queer Theodicy After the Closet) and  Bishop Donagrant Le’Prist McCluney (topic: Progressive Pentecostalism) will share the stage with our two featured speakers. 

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