Faculty

Lee H. Butler, Jr. Professor of Theology and Psychology

Click here for public lectures by Dr. Butler.

B.A., Bucknell University, 1981; M.Div., Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1986; Th.M., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1988; M.Phil., Ph.D., Drew University, 1992, 1994.

Author: Liberating Our Dignity, Saving Our Souls (Chalice Press, 2006); Loving Home: Caring for African American Marriage and Family (Pilgrim Press, 2000).

Professor Butler is an African American pastoral theologian. His primary research emphasis is on African American identity formation. He explores African indigenous religions, American slavocracy, religiosity and spirituality, Black and Womanist theologies, and Black psychology, health and healing.

“Pastoral care and counseling is one of the places within theological education where the preparation and practice of ministry are experienced as embodying processes. The clearer one is about one’s own being, the more effective one will be as a caregiver and counselor. My purpose and task, therefore, is to help seminarians develop a ministerial identity through the reconciliation of personhood and experience, and to minister to the whole being as I prepare persons for ministries of care and counseling. If theological education does not engage the seminarian’s reformational and transformational needs, I fail to fulfill my calling to prepare persons for ministry in a world in need of the reforming and transforming power of God.”