CONTACT INFORMATION
Email: sthompson-hill@crcds.edu
Rev. Dr. Shazetta Thompson-Hill is a faith leader, educator and higher education administrator who employs interdisciplinary and intersectional practices to: strengthen existing program structures; institute best practices; and develop innovative and sustainable programming for diverse organizations. She earned the Bachelor of Arts degree in Mass Communication from Lane College (Jackson, TN), the Master of Social Work degree and Master of Education degree in Cultural and Educational Policy Studies from Loyola University Chicago, and the Master of Divinity degree from Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary (Evanston, IL). Dr. Thompson-Hill also earned the Doctor of Ministry degree from Southern Methodist University, Perkins School of Theology (Dallas, TX).
Dr. Thompson-Hill is an ordained elder in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church and has served in numerous local, regional and national capacities within the denomination. Most recently she served as Senior Associate Pastor at Christian Chapel Temple of Faith in Dallas, TX. On local, state, and national levels, she is known for her commitment to community activism and involvement as well as student engagement on the campuses of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Dr. Thompson-Hill has worked in instructional and administrative capacities in educational organizations and institutions in Tennessee, Texas, Florida and New York.
Currently, Dr. Thompson-Hill serves as the Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program and Faculty Affiliate at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School. Recently, she was appointed as the Program Director for Residential Ministry at Georgetown University. Her career focus and goal is to work toward the development and cultivation of environments where faith, education and society can effectively coexist to address the needs of students and others on college and university campuses.
Dr. Thompson-Hill is a member of the American Academy of Religion and Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. She is the proud wife of Rev. Jeremiah Hill, Esq., mother of two sons, Isaac JamesHenry Hill (21) and Alexander Wesley-Louis Hill (9). She is a Theo-documentary filmmaker and photographer who enjoys minimalism and travel. She, Jeremiah and Alex reside in Washington, DC along with their Miniature Dachshund, Eli.
Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Kishundra D. King holds a Ph.D. degree in Religion, Psychology, and Culture from Vanderbilt University, where she was a Theology and Practice Program fellow. She has also earned an M.Div. from Yale University Divinity School and an M.S. in Counseling from Creighton University.
Dr. King’s research focuses on Womanist pastoral theology grounded in Black girlhood experiences where she draws on her clinical counseling experiences and employs a Womanist approach to ethnography. In her classroom, Dr. King aims to create a formative learning environment where students develop their own identity and practice in Black religious thought and life. She has also served as a co-convener and conference planner in various academic settings.
On July 1, 2021, Dr. King joined the faculty of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School as the Assistant Professor of Practical Theology and Director of the Black Religious Thought & Life Program.
Dr. Melanie A. Duguid-May teaches and learns theology as discursive and poetic language with which to engage the flesh and blood realities of life, local and global. Rooted in Christian communities and traditions of doing theology, I am committed to paying attention to God as the living God whose creative work continues and who opens possibilities to make ways out of no way. Convinced theology is a morally obligated task, I am committed to investigate where and among whom the doing of theology intersects with political and economic and gender and racial and cultural and ecological dynamics in ways that are life giving or death dealing. Particular foci of courses include: Christian theology as morally obligated community discourse, particularly as articulated worldwide; images and voices of women and gender in Christian tradition; mysticism, community and revolutionary change; earth justice and spirituality (e.g., water is life; pandemic, political ecology, theology, and responses of the faithful; forest spirituality); Kairos as call to repentance and cry of hope, engaging the worldwide movement led by South African and Palestinian Christian voices. Having first lived and studied in Jerusalem and environs in 1975, I have returned often to engage Palestinians, as well as do research and writing. For the last ten years, my colleague Dr. Mark Brummitt and I have led study pilgrimages that feature at once walking where Jesus walked and seeing what Jesus saw: a people—Palestinian Christians and Muslims—living under military occupation.
My publications include many articles, book reviews, chapters, and essays in anthologies, dictionaries, edited volumes, encyclopedias, and journals—academic, ecclesial, and ecumenical, including international—and magazines. I have also authored and edited five books, including Bonds of Unity: Women, Theology and the Worldwide Church (Scholars Press, 1989); A Body Knows: A Theopoetics of Death and Resurrection (Continuum Publishing, 1995); and Jerusalem Testament: Palestinian Christians Speak, 1988-2008 (Eerdmans Publishing, 2010).
I have been part of the teaching and learning community at CRCDS since August 1992. During these years I have served as Dean of The Program for the Study of Women & Gender in Church and Society (1992-2000) and Vice President for Academic Life & Dean of Faculty (2000-2009), as well as Professor of Theology to the present. From 2004 to 2020, I was the John Price Crozer Professor of Theology.
Having grown up in the Church of the Brethren, one of the Historic Peace Churches, I am now an ordained Priest in the Episcopal Church. I serve as Priest-in-Charge (part-time) of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Bath, New York.
With my spouse, I live near Naples, New York, where we cultivate an ancient and indigenous form of farming modeled on a forest, i.e., an organic forest garden, an ecosystem that integrates the care of our dairy goats and ducks, together with our own food needs.
Having earned degrees at Manchester College, IND (B.A. Religion & Peace Studies); Harvard University Divinity School (M.Div.); and Harvard University (A.M., Ph.D.), I also studied at the Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches and the University of Geneva (Chateau de Bossey). Manchester University (formerly, college) conferred the degree Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.), in 2016.
The Rev. Cynthia Rasmussen, Ph.D. is the pastor of St Mark’s and St John’s Episcopal Church. She received her Ph.D. in Theology and History from Union Presbyterian Seminary in Virginia. Cindy has been an Adjunct professor for CRCDS since 2006 and serves on the Women and Gender Advisory Board.
Dr. Scarsella is Assistant Professor of Ethics and Director of Gender, Sexual, and Racial Justice (GSRJ) studies at CRCDS. She teaches courses in theology and ethics that make use of intersectionally feminist, queer, and critical race theories to promote justice and flourishing in gendered, sexual, and racial terms. See the GSRJ Program page to read more about GSRJ courses, certificates, events, projects, and opportunities.
Dr. Scarsella’ teaching and research also include an emphasis on trauma studies and sexual violence. In addition to studying trauma and sexual violence academically, she is a professional advocate for survivors of sexual violence—specifically those navigating Christian communities and institutions. For more on her advocacy work, see the organization Into Account.
Dr. Scarsella earned her PhD in Theological Studies from Vanderbilt University and was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Louisville Institute. She has authored multiple academic journal articles, book chapters, and publications for a public audience, including several available online and linked below. Her current book project is about sexual violence and the problem of belief. In today’s social landscape, discourse on sexual violence often includes anxiety around what it means to believe survivors, which survivors ought to be believed, what kinds of evidence are or are not necessary as preconditions for belief, and how an ethical insistence on believing survivors interfaces with legal, congressional, workplace, Title IX, and other kinds of procedures for addressing sexual violence. That belief is fundamental to solidarity with survivors seems clear. And yet, a solution to the problem that maintains robust solidarity with survivors is not readily practiced. Part one of the book traces the historical shape of the problem of belief while sustaining special attention on its theological dimensions. Part two proposes three trajectories of intervention, each centered around the task of reconceptualizing belief in the wake of sexual violence as an embodied practice of resistance to the traumatic alchemy of reality into incoherence.
Dr. Scarsella welcomes prospective students interested in CRCDS’s Gender, Sexual, and Racial Justice program to reach out by email. Colleagues and community members interested in exploring possibilities for collaboration are warmly welcome to be in touch as well.
A few of Dr. Scarsella’s publications are available online:
“Sexual Violence: Christian Theological Legacies and Responsibilities," Religion Compass e12337 (2019) DOI: 10.1111/rec3.12337. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/rec3.12337
"Testimony & Witness as Liberative Praxis: Authority Refigured," The Other Journal 30 (2019) https://theotherjournal.com/2019/05/30/testimony-and-witness-as-liberative-praxis-authority-refigured/.
“Not Making Sense: Why Stanley Hauerwas's Response to Yoder's Sexual Abuse Misses the Mark,” ABC Religion & Ethics, November 30, 2017, http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2017/11/30/4774014.htm.
“Show Strength: How to Respond When Worship Materials are Implicated in Abuse,” written with Carolyn Heggen, Katie Graber, Anneli Loepp Thiessen, Sarah Kathleen Johnson, and Bradley Kauffman. MennoMedia, 2020, http://voicestogetherhymnal.org/wp-content/uploads/2021 /01/Show-Strength.pdf
Dr. Jin Young Choi is Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins and the Baptist Missionary Training School Professorial Chair in Biblical Studies. She earned her Ph.D. in New Testament and Early Christianity at Vanderbilt University and was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the Louisville Institute as part of the Institute’s Vocation of the Theological Educator Initiative.
By weaving biblical narrative together with diverse interpretative threads, her work focuses on the intersection of race/ethnicity, gender, empire, and early Christianity. Choi is the author of the book, Postcolonial Discipleship of Embodiment: An Asian and Asian American Feminist Reading of the Gospel of Mark (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and co-editor of the volumes, such as Minoritized Women Reading Race and Ethnicity: Intersectional Approaches to Constructed Identity and Early Christian Texts (Lexington Books, 2020); Faith, Class, and Labor: Intersectional Approaches in a Global Context (Wipf & Stock, 2020); and Systemic Racism and the Global Pandemic: Negotiating Race and Ethnicity in Asian American Biblical Criticism (The Bible and Critical Theory journal, 2020).
Attuned not only to the local church but also to the life of global Christianity, Choi has authored Bible study books and lectionary resources for the church and has given lectures and presentations to diverse audience—most recently for the Council for World Mission (2017-2019) and the Society of Asian Biblical Studies (2018). Her scholarship is also dedicated to the wider academic society in the U.S. and internationally. Choi has served the Society of Biblical Literature in several capacities and currently is a co-chair of the Minority Criticism and Biblical Interpretation steering committee and a member of editorial boards of Semeia Studies; and International Voices in Biblical Studies.
The Reverend Angela D. Sims, Ph.D. is the first female President of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School (CRCDS) and the first President to lead CRCDS at its new location at 320 North Goodman Street in Rochester, NY. She is also the first African-American female President to lead any Rochester-area college. Prior to joining CRCDS July 1, 2019, Dr. Sims served as Vice President of Institutional Advancement and Robert B. and Kathleen Rogers Professor in Church and Society at Saint Paul School of Theology in Leawood, KS. She holds a Ph.D. in Christian Social Ethics from Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, VA. Prior to matriculation at Union, Dr. Sims completed a baccalaureate degree summa cum laude at Trinity College (Trinity Washington University) and a Master of Divinity with honors at Howard University School of Divinity.
Dr. Sims has cast a vision for Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School to become a seminary of and for the community committed to practices of peace, service, and justice. With an emphasis on strengthening the school’s infrastructure, Dr. Sims has led the school through a process of strategic planning. In this season of new beginnings, this plan will inform a missional approach to initiatives designed to enhance academic excellence, achieve financial sustainability, improve efficiency and effectiveness, and engage the community.
Dr. Sims’s research examines connections between faith, race, and violence with specific attention to historical and contemporary ethical implications of lynching and a culture of lynching in the United States. Principal investigator for an oral history project, “Remembering Lynching: Strategies of Resistance and Visions of Justice,” her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Womanist Scholars Program at the Interdenominational Theological Center, the Louisville Institute, the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, and the Institute for Oral History at Baylor University. Dr. Sims is the author of Lynched: The Power of Memory in a Culture of Terror; Ethical Complications of Lynching: Ida B. Wells’s Interrogation of American Terror; co-editor with Katie Geneva Cannon and Emilie M. Townes of Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader; and, lead author of Religio-Political Narratives in the United States: From Martin Luther King, Jr. through Jeremiah Wright.
A native of Louisiana, Dr. Sims grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. An ordained Baptist clergywoman who takes seriously the prophetic imperative “to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God,” Dr. Sims is an active member and contributor to several academic guilds and faith-based community organizations.