Gay L. Byron
AUTHOR

Gay L. Byron

Politics & Social Sciences
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I teach New Testament courses at Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, DC. I have also taught at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, NY. My first publication Symbolic Blackness and Ethnic Difference in Early Christian Literature analyzes the "ethno-political rhetoric" related to Ethiopians, Egyptians, Blacks, and blackness in early Christian writings. "Why does the Ethiopian come among us?" –– a quote from a patristic writing –– has been a driving question for my scholarship. Other publications include Womanist Interpretations of the Bible: Expanding the Discourse (co-edited with Vanessa Lovelace). In this volume my essay, “Black Collectors and Keepers of Tradition: Resources for a Womanist Biblical Ethic of (Re)Interpretation,” describes the André Tweed Collection of Ethiopian Artifacts and Manuscripts housed at the Howard University School of Divinity. Recently published in 2022, Black Scholars Matter: Visions, Struggles, and Hopes in Africana Biblical Studies (co-edited with Hugh Page) features twelve expansive essays originally presented during a virtual symposium sponsored by the Society of Biblical Literature held in August 2020, at the height of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. My essay in this volume, "Contemplative Collegiality: Caring for the Souls of Black Biblical Scholars," is a call for new models of leadership based on care, trust, and deep listening. This essay is also reprinted in Soul Food: Nourishing Essays on Contemplative Living and Leadership (2023). Forthcoming for 2024 is a second edition of the seminal volume, True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary. All the contributions from the first volume (published in 2007) have been updated to reflect new scholarship and contemporary social and cultural realities. In addition to these books and writings on biblical interpretation, I serve as an ordained minister of the Word and Sacrament (Teaching Elder) in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). I preach and lead workshops for a variety of denominational bodies on topics dealing with race, ethnicity, and the Bible; African American and womanist hermeneutics; and early Ethiopian Christianity.
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