Jeremy L. Williams to join Brite Divinity School Faculty

Brite Divinity School is pleased to announce that Rev. Jeremy L. Williams will join the Brite faculty as Assistant Professor of New Testament in the Fall of 2021. Rev. Williams is a scholar of religion who specializes in New Testament and Early Christianity.

Rev. Williams graduated with Highest Honors in Religious Studies and Economics from Vanderbilt University. He earned his M.Div. degree from Yale Divinity School where he received the Henry Hallam Tweedy Prize, which is the highest award presented to graduates. Rev. Williams has received numerous fellowships including the Forum for Theological Exploration Predissertation Fellowship. This summer, Rev. Williams will defend his Harvard Ph.D. dissertation entitled, “Making Criminals: The Rhetoric of Criminality in Acts of the Apostles.”

Rev. Williams’s research involves studying biblical passages, especially in Acts, where imperial and local officials criminalize the Jesus following movement. His approach involves using Roman legal studies, critical race theory, Black studies, womanist cultural criticism, myth criticism, and material culture to assess how ancient texts crafted narratives to racialize, criminalize, and victimize individuals and groups of people. Conscious of the role that the Bible plays in public policy, he is invested in developing strategies for reading biblical texts in ways that expose the logics that fuel mass incarceration, over-policing, and discriminatory practices in Western judicial systems. Jeremy has a number of forthcoming publications including, “Victory Today is Mine: The Present, Power, and Perseverance in Revelation 12:1-12.”

Rev. Williams is an ordained elder in full connection in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church with almost two decades of ministerial experience, and he has served as pastor to one of the denomination’s largest congregations.