Leslie Bowling-Dyer

I am committed to the creation of educational spaces where people are empowered to critically consider issues of culture, morality and meaning and to the development of strategies that bring about liberation for those living under the weight of oppression.

From time to time older Black church people question the younger generation’s fidelity to the cause of black liberation, particularly the generation’s professional class, most of whom are women. This raises a serious question for those of us living in the West: has our regional context and contemporary culture given us cultural-historical amnesia or have we adapted our means and method of struggle to meet the particularities of our context?

“...ideas stemming from our religious commitments draw together every aspect of human life.”

I am pursuing research to examine the extent to which, professional Black women from Baptist churches are in response to their broader California context, retaining and/or adapting their understanding of educational and professional attainment as symbols of resistance against racial injustice. Employing a Womanist methodological approach, my research will focus on college educated professional women in Progressive Baptist congregations that see themselves as embodying a social-justice ethos.

My commitment to theological teaching and scholarship stems from my fundamental belief that ideas matter and that ideas stemming from our religious commitments draw together every aspect of human life. Embedded within human communication and practices are the mechanisms of power and legitimation that give shape and meaning to our communal thinking. Such mechanisms are typically employed in the maintenance of social inequality.

Theology that exists at the intersection of faith and reason can provide oppressed and marginalized people access to resources that can empower them to challenge the status quo. Changes in human thinking can have a transformative effect on our sense of reality and purpose as well as our sense of self. As one who longs for the liberation promised by the Judeo-Christian vision, I can think of no work more strategic than theological education.