—Emilie Townes, Andrew
W. Mellon Professor of African American Religion and Theology at Yale Divinity
School, to deliver lecture February 28—
Princeton,
NJ, February 18, 2013–Dr. Emilie Townes, associate dean of
academic affairs and the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of African American
Religion and Theology at Yale Divinity School, will give the annual Women in
Church and Ministry Lecture at Princeton Theological Seminary on Thursday,
February 28, 2013, at 7:00 p.m. in the Main Lounge of the Mackay Campus Center
on the Seminary campus. Her lecture is titled “Justice Notes” and will provide
four notes on just Christian witness, as influenced by the wisdom of older
generations of black women and men.
Townes earned a Ph.D. in religion in
society and personality from Northwestern University and a D.Min. from the
University of Chicago Divinity School. Her focus is on Christian ethics,
womanist ethics, critical social theory, cultural theory and studies,
postmodernism, and social postmodernism, with particular attention to African
American women in the church and the linkages among race, gender, class, and
other forms of oppression. An ordained American Baptist clergywoman, Townes was
a member of the General Board of the American Baptist Church and served on the
Commission of Life and Theology of the American Baptist Churches and on the
National Commission on the Ministry. Prior to her appointment at Yale, Townes
was the Carolyn Beaird Professor of Christian Ethics at Union Theological Seminary
in the City of New York. She served as president of the American Academy in
Religion in 2008, the first African American woman to do so. Her many
publication include Womanist Justice,
Womanist Hope, In a Blaze of Glory: Womanist Spirituality as Social Witness, Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African
American Health Issues and a Womanist Ethic of Care, and Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production
of Evil.
Princeton Theological Seminary was founded
in 1812, the first seminary established by the General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church. Its first woman graduate to receive a professional degree
for ministry was Muriel von Orden Jennings, who graduated in 1932. Princeton is
the largest Presbyterian seminary in the country, with more than 500 students
in six graduate degree programs.
For more information, contact the
Communications/Publications Office at 609.497.7760.