Rev. Monica A. Coleman: “Iyanla Vanzant, Black Women’s Spirituality and the Oprah Effect: Straddling and Merging Religious Difference”

Watch video of the Rev. Monica A. Coleman, scholar and inspirational speaker with a strong commitment to connecting faith and social justice, delivering the 2013 Antoinette Brown Lecture March 21 at Vanderbilt University Divinity School.

Read the full press release.

Coleman, who earned a master of divinity at Vanderbilt, wrote Not Alone: Reflections on Faith and Depression (Inner Prizes, 2012). Other books include Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology (Fortress Press, 2008) and The Dinah Project: a Handbook for Congregational Response to Sexual Violence (Pilgrim Press, 2004).

She is co-editor of Creating Women’s Theology: a Movement Engaging Process Thought (Pickwick, 2011) and editor of the forthcoming anthology, Ain’t I a Womanist Too?: Third Wave Womanist Religious Thought (Fortress 2013).

Coleman is a research fellow with the New Media Project at Union Theological Seminary, a Lilly Endowment-funded project that helps religious leaders become more theologically savvy about technology.

The Antoinette Brown Lecture, made possible by a gift from Sylvia Sanders Kelley of Atlanta, Ga., is named in memory of the first woman ordained to the Christian ministry in the United States. The lecture, which began in 1974, is intended to “bring to the school distinguished women theologians to speak on concerns for women in ministry.”