C. Shelby Rooks Lecture with Dr. Juan Floyd-Thomas

CTS is excited to announce Juan Floyd-Thomas, Associate Professor of African American Religious History, Vanderbilt University, as the keynote at the 2024 C. Shelby Rooks Lecture, taking place Thursday, October 10, at 6:00 pm. A reception will begin at 5:00 pm.

In his teaching and research interests as a religious historian, Prof. Floyd-Thomas emphasizes: race, ethnicity, and religious pluralism within the modern United States; the history of new / alternative religious movements; the varieties of African American religious experience; critical discourses on religion and popular culture; and African American churches and sociopolitical reform; religion and economics; religion and international relations; and interdisciplinary theories and methodological approaches within religious studies. He holds a B.A. from Rutgers University, a M.A. from Temple University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

In addition to his numerous journal articles and book chapters, Prof. Floyd-Thomas is author of The Origins of Black Humanism: Reverend Ethelred Brown and the Unitarian Church (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) and Liberating Black Church History: Making It Plain (Abingdon Press, 2014) as well as co-author of Black Church Studies: An Introduction (Abingdon Press, 2007) and The Altars Where We Worship: The Religious Significance of Popular Culture in the United States with Mark Toulouse and Stacey Floyd-Thomas  (Westminster John Knox, 2016). Most recently, Prof. Floyd-Thomas co-edited Religion in the Age of Obama with Anthony B. Pinn (Bloomsbury Press, 2018). He is currently working on two book projects: a history of African diasporic religions in Harlem; and a collection of essays on white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and violence in the ongoing Culture Wars.

Prof. Floyd-Thomas has delivered papers and lectures at numerous colleges, universities, and seminaries across the United States as well as international locales such as Canada, England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Jamaica, Senegal, Ghana, Egypt, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. From 2008-2011, Prof. Floyd-Thomas served on the cultural resources team of the African American Online Lectionary. Furthermore, his work can be found in such media outlets ranging from the Washington Post, Esquire, Boston Globe, NPR’s All Things Considered, and WBEZ’s Sound Opinions to name a few.

Currently, Floyd-Thomas serves as the Vice President of the Society for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion (SRER) and is also member of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), Organization of American Historians (OAH), American Historical Association (AHA), American Society of Church History (ASCH), and Collegium of African American Research (CAAR). He also serves as an Associate Editor of the AAR’s Reading Religion website. In 2018, Floyd-Thomas was inducted into the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. College of Ministers and Laity, Collegium of Scholars. Additionally, he is both a co-founder and an executive board member of the Black Religious Scholars Group (BRSG).

Floyd-Thomas has had his research supported by fellowships and grants from the Louisville Institute, the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, and the Robert Penn Warren Center for Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He was named the Sankofa Scholar by Candler School of Theology’s Black Church Studies Program in 2016 and 2019. More recently, he delivered the 2021 Williams Institute Lectures at Methodist Theological School in Ohio as well as the Convocation Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary’s 2022 Engle Institute of Preaching.