Rev. Renita J. Weems, Ph.D.

Biography

Reverend Dr. Renita J. Weems is a writer, a minister, a biblical scholar, public intellectual, and ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal church. Rev. Dr. Renita Weems earned a Ph.D. degree at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1989 making her the first African American woman to earn a doctorate in Old Testament Studies. She received her Master of Divinity from Princeton Seminary, and her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College. In addition to being a former professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School (1987-2004), Rev. Dr. Renita Weems has taught at Spelman College, Howard University Divinity School, Memphis Theological Seminary and recently (Spring 2024) served as the Crump Visiting Professor and Black Religious Scholars Group Scholar-in-Residence at Seminary of the Southwest (Austin, TX). Reverend Dr. Renita J. Weems is currently Professor of Biblical Studies and Academic Dean at Gammon Theological Seminary (Atlanta, GA).

Dr. Weems' scholarly and insightful publications, commentaries, and articles on interpreting the Bible in contemporary times, modern faith, race and religion, women in the church, and womanism and faith has made her a highly sought-after writer and speaker for more than four decades. She has numerous books, commentaries and articles on the Bible and prophetic religion to her credit. Among her written works includes the award-winning “Listening for God: A Minister’s Journey Through Silence and Doubt” which won the Religious Communicators’ Council’s prestigious 1999 Wilbur Award for “excellence in communicating spiritual values to the secular media.” She is the first African American woman to deliver the Yale University Lyman Beecher Lecture. Dr. Weems is featured in “Black Stars: African American Religious Leaders”; a collection of biographies of some of the most important Black Religious Leaders over the last 200 hundred years, including such impressive figures as Adam Clayton Powell, Elijah Muhammad, Sojourner Truth, Howard Thurman, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Her most recent publications have focused on blacks in the academy, black female intellectuals, and a retrospective on the early decades of womanist biblical scholarship. Dr. Weems is currently working on a memoir that sheds light on how the civil rights and women’s movement shaped her love for the church and her commitment to thinking critically and struggling fiercely to help create a just world.

Reverend Dr. Renita J. Weems lives in Nashville, TN with her family.