User:DaughterofAse/Jacquelyn Grant

Dr. Jacquelyn Grant is the primary foremother and founder of womanist theology, a pioneer and legacy within feminist and womanist theological studies. Her life within the rural South and the Methodist Black Church ushered in an interest which included the study and practice of theology. She was born December 19, 1948, in Georgetown, South Carolina during the Jim Crow era of the United States of America. Her birth includes luminous beginnings within the African Methodist Episcopal Church where her interest in religion and the Black Church perhaps developed as a result of the denominations Christian and educational leadership. Attending Catholic school at a young age, and graduating from the local Howard High School in 1966, Dr. Grant was poised to succeed beyond the Church. A graduate of Bennett College and Turner Theological Seminary, she became the first black woman to earn a doctoral degree in systematic theology at Union Theological Seminary.[citation needed] There she created the thesis The Development and Limitations of Feminist Christology : Toward an Engagement of White Women's and Black Women's Religious Experiences under the tutelage of James H. Cone who is known as the father of black theology. In 1977, Grant became involved with Harvard Divinity School's Women's Research Program and with her involvement, it led to the creation of the Women's Studies in Religion Program in which she remained for two years. Dr. Grant led efforts to join women in the fight for equality, as she spearheaded efforts to bring women together to address the role and equality of women with a position paper on the status of women written for the 1976 General Conference in the African Methodist Episcopal Church; convening a meeting of the female ministers at the General Conference to voice concerns about representation in the governing processes and ministry of the AMEC; leading a delegation to take these concerns before the Council of Bishops in 1977 at Atlantic City, NJ.

Her publication White Women's Christ and Black Women's Jesus is historic in that the text addresses the sincere failures of Western Christianity which includes the confronting of white feminist Christology within the human experience of Black women. In 1981, she founded the Center for Black Women in Church and Society at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta in 1981, where she holds the title of Professor. She has been assistant minister at Flipper Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church from 1980 to 1982, and later the Victory African Methodist Episcopal Church in Atlanta. She is now the Callaway Professor of Systematic Theology at the Interdenominational Theological Union in Atlanta. She is widowed to the pastor John Collier Jr. and now resides in Atlanta.