Making It Plain: Celebrating the Imago Dei of Blackness

The Black Religious Scholars Group Twenty-Seventh Annual Consultation

Making It Plain: Celebrating the Imago Dei of Blackness

Honoring

Rev. Dr. Brad R. Braxton

and Dr. Anthony B. Pinn

Friday, November 21, 2025

7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

The theme for this year’s BRSG gathering— Affirming What Is Sacred About Blackness—is a call to build a new way forward by centering the divine, dignified, and enduring value of Black life, culture, and faith. In a nation where race and religion have too often been wielded as tools of division and weapons for control, we seek to reclaim them as sources of healing, resistance, and sacred possibilities. Born from struggle, rooted in love, and shaped through generations of communal wisdom spanning from across the diaspora, Blackness has always carried with it a sacred quality. Furthermore, he notion of the sacred and the vision of a beloved community empowered by this belief are not abstract ideals; they are embodied in the lived experiences of Black people who, even in the face of dehumanization and systemic oppression since the founding of these yet-to-be United States, have forged beauty, brilliance, belonging, and belief. Yet, as we find ourselves in a political atmosphere that strives to marginalize millions of escalate cultural conflicts by leaders who would rather erase than embrace a more inclusive and expansive vision of history, we gather not just to reflect but to advance a vision of Blackness is not a problem to be endured and eventually solved, but a precious inheritance to be redeemed and honored.

Honorees

Rev. Dr. Brad R. Braxton | President and Professor of Public Theology, Chicago Theological Seminary

Dr. Anthony B. Pinn | Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Founding Director, Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning, Rice University

Council of Griots

Dr. Shonda Jones, moderator | Dean, Brite Divinity School

Rev. Dr. Brandon Crowley | Director of Theological Education and Senior Research Fellow in Religion, Homiletics, and Ecclesiology, Episcopal Divinity and Pastor, Myrtle Baptist Church

Rev. Dr. Pamela Lightsey | Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs and Associate Professor of Constructive Theology, Meadville Lombard Theological School

Dr. Tracey Hucks | Victor S. Thomas Professor of Africana Religious Studies, Harvard Divinity School

Rev. Dr. Jeremy Williams | Assistant Professor of New Testament and Director of the Center for Theology and Justice, Brite Divinity School

Location

Myrtle Baptist Church

21 Curve Street

West Newton, MA 02465

Rev. Dr. Brad R. Braxton is President and Professor of Public Theology at Chicago Theological Seminary. He is a seasoned biblical scholar and homiletician (i.e., an expert in the arts of sermon creation, delivery, and evaluation). He has held professorships at Southern Methodist University, Vanderbilt University, and Wake Forest University, as well as lectureships at Georgetown University, Harvard Divinity School, and McCormick Theological Seminary. In addition to his work in biblical studies and homiletics, his scholarship and teaching are conversant with other disciplines, including African American studies, interreligious studies, womanist, feminist, and LGBTQ+ studies, and postcolonial studies.

Dr. Braxton is the author of five books exploring the intersection of religion, cultural identity, and social justice, including two books appearing in 2023: A Master Class on Being Human: A Black Christian and A Black Secular Humanist on Religion, Race, and Justice (co-authored with the noted secular humanist Dr. Anthony Pinn) and Open: Unorthodox Thoughts on God and Community. Dr. Braxton’s books No Longer Slaves: Galatians and African American Experience and Preaching Paul are frequently used in divinity school and seminary courses.

As a testament to Dr. Braxton’s expertise in interreligious engagement, the Smithsonian Institution selected him in 2020 as the Senior Program Advisor for the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The Smithsonian Institution hosted in the summer of 2023 a multifaceted program on the National Mall in Washington, DC, which examined the diverse tapestry of religious communities and experiences in the United States. The two-week event drew substantial crowds to the National Mall and to the online resources affiliated with the festival. Dr. Braxton conceptualized major themes for the program and wrote a successful grant proposal to the Lilly Endowment, which received $1.5 million to support the festival.

Dr. Braxton is an ordained Baptist minister and a highly sought-after lecturer and preacher. In 2007, he preached at Westminster Abbey in London, England. His Westminster Abbey sermon on justice and non-violence was part of the bicentennial commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. He has also preached and lectured in Benin, Canada, Ghana, and South Africa. Furthermore, he is the Founding Senior Pastor of The Open Church, an inclusive congregation in Baltimore, Maryland committed to social activism, LGBTQ+ equality, and interfaith collaboration.

Dr. Anthony B. Pinn received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1994. Other degrees include the BA from Columbia University, the MDiv and MA, both from Harvard, and an honorary Doctorate degree from Meadville-Lombard Theological School. Pinn began his teaching career at Macalester College (St. Paul, MN), where his research and teaching earned him early tenure and promotion to full professor within the first eight years of his career. In 2003, Pinn accepted an offer from Rice University (Houston, TX), becoming the first African American to hold an endowed chair at the University. After an additional semester at Macalester and a semester at Williams College as the Sterling Brown 1922 Visiting Professor, Pinn joined the Rice faculty as the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University, and he now serves as the Agnes Cullen Arnold Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religion. During his time at Rice, Pinn founded and directed the Houston Enriches Rice Education (HERE) project (2007-2012). In 2012, Pinn received approval to transform the HERE Project into the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning. This center is a part of the Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research. Pinn also founded and directs the doctoral concentration in the study of African American Religion at Rice. Outside Rice, Pinn has served as the first executive director of the Society for the Study of Black Religion, and he also served on the Meadville Lombard Theological School Board of Trustees (2007-2012). In addition, he has served in various roles on the board of directors and the executive committee of the American Academy of Religion. Pinn also serves as a chapel advisor for the Rothko chapel, and has worked with the Menil Collection on his community engagement efforts. Pinn is also a member of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture religion advisory board. He also has worked with the Aspen Institute on its “Inclusive America” Project, and he serves on the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee board of directors and on the Panel on Theological Education. He is also the Director of Research for the Institute for Humanist Studies Think Tank (Washington, DC). In 2021, Pinn became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in recognition of his contributions to scholarship.

Pinn, an award-winning author, made his initial mark on the academy with Why, Lord? Suffering and Evil in Black Theology (1995), galvanizing Pinn as an African American humanist and solidifying African American humanism as an historic, non-theistic religious orientation for African Americans. In this text, Pinn finds that black theologians have no evidence to support the notion that God is working on behalf of the oppressed, and any theological position that claims such is based on redemptive suffering theodicies that perpetuate African American suffering. For Pinn, human liberation is more important than the maintenance of any religious symbol, including God. Pinn offers African American humanism as a strategy for “liberation” that does not make black suffering virtuous.

Why, Lord? provided a foundation for much of the work to follow. The black humanism Pinn espoused in Why, Lord? has dominated a great deal of Pinn’s work, seen in such texts as By These Hands: A Documentary History of African American Humanism (2001) and African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod (2004). By These Hands explores African American humanist thought in history, suggesting that humanism is not new to black religion. African American Humanist Principles articulates practical and philosophical unifying ideas within African American humanism. Collectively, these texts demonstrate African American humanism’s historical legacy as a religious orientation within the African American community, as well as offer theological and ethical explications of black humanism not previously addressed by scholars of African American religion. Most recently, Pinn pushes the African American humanist position into even greater view with The End of God-Talk: An African American Humanist Theology (2012). This text presents a non-theistic African American Humanist theology that brings together elements of an humanist theology while expanding the understanding of theology to include non-theistic orientations. Pinn’s work on humanism also includes Humanism: Essays in Race, Religion, and Cultural Production (2015) and When Colorblindness Isn’t the Answer: Humanism and the Challenge of Race (2017). In addition, he has edited numerous volumes related to humanism, including The Oxford Handbook of Humanism (2021).

Pinn’s research has always demanded a thorough and expansive use of theory and method. Pinn took up the task of specifically addressing these issues in Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion (2003), claiming in it that the black religious impulse is the “quest for complex subjectivity.” More than simply traditional, organized theistic belief and practice, black religion is fundamentally a quest to answer and address the who, what, when, where and why of human existence in general, in terms set against the backdrop of the particular history of dehumanization and terror experienced by African Americans. Terror and Triumph also provides attention to methodological concerns necessary for the flourishing of African American religious studies as a discipline of critical inquiry and investigation through the development of ‘relational centralism,’ an interdisciplinary methodology combining aspects of traditional religious studies with elements of anthropology, aesthetics and art criticism. For Pinn, black religious scholarship requires attention to both its form and content. To date, scholars of African American religion have dealt extensively with the content of black religion, but not as fully with the questions of what is black religion, what is black religion and what is black religion, the form(s). Terror and Triumph, then, provides a shift in both how African American religion is theorized and a programmatic shift in the methodologies employed in the study of African American religion. Pinn expanded and corrected the theory of religion provided in Terror and Triumph with the publication of Interplay of Things: Religion, Art and Presence Together (2021).

Aside from the specific interest in theory and method, Pinn has authored two history texts. With his mother Anne Pinn, The Fortress Introduction to Black Church History (2001) is widely used in classrooms as it provides an accessible entry point for seminarian and laity alike to engage black church history in all its diversity. Pinn wrote The Black Church in the Post-Civil Rights Era (2002) which addresses ongoing concerns and challenges facing the black church, and Introducing African American Religion (2013) provides an overview of important themes in Black religious thought and practice. Other notable edited volumes include Noise and Spirit: The Religious and Spiritual Sensibilities of Rap Music (2003); with Dwight Hopkins, Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic (2004); with Juan Floyd-Thomas Religion in the Age of Obama (2018); and with Katie Cannon, The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology (2014). Noise and Spirit collects essays from various scholars of black religion addressing the overt and subversive religiosity at work within hip hop culture. Loving the Body uncovers black religious scholars’ theorization and application of the body within African American religious studies. Pinn’s Embodiment and the New Shape of Black Theological Thought (2010) extends the discussion of embodiment that accompanies much of his work, offering guiding points for future black theological scholarship, as well as presenting a detailed depiction of the practical application of “the quest for complex subjectivity” as theory of black religion. Centrally, this text is a nascent exploration of what a “body-centered approach to theological thought” might look like, and an explication of why prioritizing “the body’s meaning and lived experiences” as the starting point for theology is vital for future scholarship. Author of nearly thirty monographs or edited volumes, Pinn also serves as editor of numerous book series: with Stacey Floyd-Thomas (Vanderbilt University), “Religion and Social Transformation”, New York University Press; with Juergen Manemann, “Studies in Humanism and Atheism”; with Monica Miller, “Bloomsbury Studies in Religion and Culture” and “Routledge Studies in Religion and Hip Hop”.

Pinn is concerned with the larger Houston community and through the HERE Project and now the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning, he works to foster greater connections and collaborations between Rice University and the larger Houston community. For example, each year, a city-wide high school essay contest is held, awarding scholarships to the top essayists and SAT test-prep courses to the top ten finalists. Nearly two hundred high school students participated in 2010. Under Pinn’s leadership, the program also archives valuable cultural artifacts from the community through endeavors such as the African American Quilt Exhibit and the archiving of the papers of some of Houston’s most influential leaders. Also, each year a member of the Houston community is honored through the Legacy award. Thanks to these endeavors, the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning provides a much-needed link between what happens inside Rice’s campus and outside it in the surrounding city.

Pinn also founded and serves as primary advisor of the doctoral concentration in the study of African American Religion at Rice University. The doctoral concentration in the study of African American Religion, since its founding in 2003, has developed a reputation within the academy as a program committed to academic rigor and the flourishing of African American religious studies. This concentration is marked by excellence on and off campus. For example, the students in this concentration have received prestigious grants and fellowships, regularly publish, and give papers at conferences across the globe. Known internationally as a leading expert in the field of African American religion, Pinn is a professor, prolific author and much sought-after lecturer committed to academic rigor and the continued growth of African American Religious Studies as a discipline within the academy. Pinn’s continued teaching and research interests span liberation theologies, black religious aesthetics, religion and popular culture, and African American humanism.