RICHMOND, Virginia (Union Seminary) — Union Presbyterian Seminary will use a $400,000 grant to lift the voices and perspectives of black women in the church, academy and the world.
According to a seminary news release, the three-year grant was awarded by the Henry Luce Foundation to the Katie Geneva Cannon Center for Womanist Leadership, which was established at the seminary in April 2018 to inspire, equip, connect and support black women divinely motivated to serve as change-makers in their community.
“The Katie Geneva Cannon Center for Womanist Leadership is the first and only effort of its kind in the country,” said director Rev. Melanie C. Jones. “This grant will support our programmatic agenda to shape the next generation of black women seminarians, graduate students of religion, clergy, and theological faculty who seek to demystify hidden manifestations of systemic oppression and address persistent and effective strategies of justice-making. Through six womanist initiatives (wellness, wisdom, witness, worship, wares and works), the Center nurtures the soul of black women as they cultivate pathways to whole communities.”
The word “womanist” is a dynamic term that describes a growing field of study and social movement that takes seriously the historical and contemporary experiences of black women while advocating for the wholeness and wellbeing of all humanity.
Cannon (1950-2018) was Union’s Annie Scales Rogers Professor of Christian Ethics, womanist progenitor of theological ethics, and the guiding force of the Center for Womanist Leadership. She was the first African American woman ordained in the United Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), a forebear of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
by Union Presbyterian Seminary, special to Presbyterian News Service
