Preachers: the opportunity and responsibility are both yours — to offer compelling moral witness right now.

Our world needs social and ecological healing. Will you take up the call for prophetic spiritual guidance to help bring about that healing?

Dates

Thursdays, 4:00 – 5:30pm ET

Presenters

Rev. Dr. Catherine E. Williams

Rev. Dr. Catherine E. Williams is Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship, and Director of Chapel Worship at the Lancaster, PA campus of Moravian University’s School of Theology. 

An ordained Elder in the United Methodist Church, Dr. Williams earned her Bachelor of Music in Church Music from Westminster Choir College of Rider University, her Master of Divinity from Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University, and her PhD in Homiletics from Princeton Theological Seminary.  

In her scholarship and teaching, Dr. Williams embraces her dual identities of musician and homiletician. Her article in the Yale Journal of Music and Religion, “Sermon and Song: A Musically Integrative Homiletic”, makes the claim for conjoined preaching and music as a homiletical method. Her chapter in  The Future Shape of Christian Proclamation: What the Global South Can Teach Us About Preaching, edited by LaRue and Nascimento, is titled “Trinidad & Tobago Preaching: The Gospel According to Calypso.” This is the first sustained homiletical analysis of this Caribbean musical genre. Her most recent book, Preaching and Music: Powerful Partners in Proclamation, (Cascade 2025) sustains her ongoing claim that when preaching and music are combined, the synergy they produce is a powerful means of embedding God’s Word into people’s hearts. Dr. Williams has taught several courses at Lexington Theological Seminary, the most recent of which was, “Worship and Song Amid Climate Challenges.”

A member of the Hymn Society of the United States and Canada, Dr. Catherine E. Williams is a sought-after teacher and conference speaker in seminaries and churches around the country. 

Rev. Dr. HyeRan Kim-Cragg

Rev. Dr. HyeRan Kim-Cragg is Principal and Professor of Preaching at Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, Canada. She was appointed the 14th principal of Emmanuel College in 2022 and is the first racialized person to lead the institution and to be promoted to full professor in 2021 in its nearly 100-year history. As a leading postcolonial scholar in homiletics, her current research focuses on connecting the ecological crisis with preaching. Kim-Cragg was elected as the president of the Academy of Homiletics (2028) and has been a co-convenor with Dr. Leah Schade for the workgroup, “Preaching, Environment, and Climate Crisis,” of the Academy of Homiletics. They are co-editing Prophetic Preaching for a Planet in Peril (forthcoming). She is also working on a monograph Preaching Ecologically with T & T Clark. As a prolific writer, her books include Practical Theology Amid Environmental Crises (2023) and Postcolonial Preaching (2021).

Rabbi Julia Watts Belser

Rabbi Julia Watts Belser (she/her) is Professor of Jewish Studies and Disability Studies at Georgetown University, as well as a Senior Research Fellow at Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. As scholar, activist, and spiritual teacher, her work brings Jewish text and tradition into dialogue with disability studies, queer feminist ethics, and environmental justice to challenge structural violence, deepen our capacity for social justice, and honor the sacredness of all life. At Georgetown, she directs the Disability and Climate Change Public Archive Project, an initiative that documents the wisdom and insights of disabled activists, artists, and first responders on the frontlines of climate crisis.

She has held faculty fellowships at Harvard Divinity School and the Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of two scholarly books, Rabbinic Tales of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Disability in the Ruins of Jerusalem (Oxford University Press, 2018) and Power, Ethics, and Ecology: Rabbinic Responses to Drought and Disaster (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Her most recent book Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole, which won a National Jewish Book Award and the Grawmeyer Award in Religion. Her essays have appeared in a wide range of venues, including Truthout, Brevity, and TIME Magazine. She’s an avid wheelchair hiker, a vocalist, and a lover of wild places whose spiritual practice is grounded in close kinship with crows and other birds who make their homes alongside hers.

Dr. Natasha DeJarnett

Dr. Natasha DeJarnett, PhD, MPH, BCES is an Assistant Professor in the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute at University of Louisville researching the health impacts of extreme heat exposure and environmental health disparities. She is also a professorial lecturer at The George Washington University. Most recently, Dr. DeJarnett was the Deputy Director for Environmental Justice Data and Evaluation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. There, she served in our nation’s first-ever Office of Environmental Justice at the Council on Environmental Quality, supporting the Biden-Harris Administration in advancing the most ambitious environmental justice agenda in history.

Previously, she held roles at the National Environmental Health Association as well as the American Public Health Association. Her service leadership experience includes the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee, Citizens’ Climate Education, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists. Dr. DeJarnett has served on The BTS Center’s Board of Trustees since 2021, stepping away to serve with the Biden-Harris Administration and now returning.

Rev. Dr. Xavier Johnson

Rev. Dr. Xavier Johnson is Assistant Professor in the Practice of Preaching and Black Church Studies at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. Dr. Johnson teaches in the areas of homiletics and Black Church studies. His research interests converge at the intersection of clergy leadership, black religion, social justice, and preaching. Dr. Xavier Johnson is ordained in the Progressive National Baptist Convention and he currently serves as the pastor of the Bethel Baptist Church in Dayton, Ohio. Prior to joining the faculty at United, he served as Assistant Professor of Practical Theology and Director of Contextual Ministry Education at Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, IN.

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