Dr. Emilie M. Townes

Dean and Distinguished Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society; Professor of American Studies; Affiliated Faculty, Women’s and Gender Studies; Director, VDS Public Theology and Racial Justice Collaborative

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 Distinguished Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society; Secondary Faculty, American Studies; Affiliated Faculty, Women’s and Gender Studies; Director, VDS Public Theology and Racial Justice Collaborative; she became 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. She was the first African American and first woman to serve as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the Yale Divinity School. She is the former Carolyn Williams Beaird Professor of Christian Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Social Ethics at Saint Paul School of Theology. Editor of two collection of essays, A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering and Embracing the Spirit: Womanist Perspectives on Hope, Salvation, and Transformation; she has also authored Womanist Ethics, 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 her groundbreaking book, Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil. She is co-editor with Stephanie Y. Mitchem of the Faith, Health, and Healing in African American Life.  Her most recent co-editorship is Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader done with the late Katie Geneva Cannon and Angela Sims was published in November 2011. Townes was elected a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. She served a four-year term as president of the Society for the Study of Black Religion from 2012 to 2016.

Fr. Richard Rohr

Franciscan Priest, Author, Founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation

Fr. Richard Rohr is a globally recognized ecumenical teacher bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism and the Perennial Tradition. He is a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Fr. Richard’s teaching is grounded in the Franciscan alternative orthodoxy—practices of contemplation and self-emptying, expressing itself in radical compassion, particularly for the socially marginalized.

Fr. Richard is the author of numerous books, including Everything Belongs, Adam’s Return, The Naked Now, Breathing Under Water, Falling Upward, Immortal Diamond, and Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi. His newest book is The Universal Christ. Find his audio conversation series Another Name for Every Thing on most podcast platforms.

Fr. Richard is academic Dean of the Living School for Action and Contemplation. Drawing upon Christianity’s place within the Perennial Tradition, the mission of the Living School is to produce compassionate and powerfully learned individuals who will work for positive change in the world based on awareness of our common union with God and all beings.

Dr. Robyn Henderson-Espinoza

TransQueer Activist, Latinx Scholar, Public Theologian

Robyn Henderson-Espinoza, PhD has been described in a myriad of ways: a scholar-activist, scholar-leader, thought-leader, teacher, public theologian, ethicist, poet of moral reason, and word artist. Among these ways of describing Dr. Robyn, they are also a visionary thinker who has spent two decades working in the borderlands of church, academy, and movements seeking to not only disrupt but dismantle supremacy culture by focusing their PhD studies on new concepts of being and becoming, decolonizing knowledge production, and bridging with radical difference. They enflesh a deep hope of collaborating in these borderland spaces where their work seeks to contribute to the ongoing work of collective liberation. Dr. Robyn is the Founder of the Activist Theology Project, a Nashville based collaborative project that seeks to work with the dominant culture and produces curriculum at the intersection of scholarship and activism.  Activist Theology as a disciplinary off-shoot of liberation theology and Movement idea has been incubating since 2008 with Dr. Robyn and further developed throughout their doctoral program and engagement with Movement leaders. Dr. Robyn was named 1 of 10 Faith Leaders to watch by the Center for American Progress in 2018.  As a scholar-activist, Dr. Robyn is committed to translating theory to action, so that our work in the borderlands reflect the deep spiritual work of transforming self to transforming the world. Dr. Robyn writes and creates both academic & other valuable resources, including digital resources. Dr. Robyn is a non-binary Transqueer Latinx who calls Nashville, TN, home. They are the author of Activist Theology, 2019, published by Fortress Press.

Mpho Tutu van Furth

Anglican Priest, Speaker, Writer, Theologian, Artist

Mpho Tutu van Furth is an Anglican priest, speaker, writer, theologian, artist, mother and youngest daughter of the world-renowned South African archbishop and human rights activist Desmond Tutuwho fought against apartheid with Nelson Mandela (he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984). She grew up in South Africa during the apartheid era. Furth's Mpho Tutu studied electrical engineering in Washington, worked in New York with refugees and has been founder and director of The TutuInstitute for Prayer and Pilgrimage and director of The Desmond & Leah Tutu legacy foundation that strives for peace and justice.

In 2015 she married Dutch professor of paediatrics Marceline van Furth. After they got married in the Netherlands, the South African church forced her to give up her priesthood. Her father Desmond Tutu, who has been fighting for the rights of homosexuals for some time, gave his fatherly victory over the marriage in South Africa.

Furth's Mpho Tutu is committed to helping young women thrive. She wants to support and coach them in their career and encourage them to make their voices heard.