Oshun is an orisha, a spirit, a deity, or a goddess that reflects one of the manifestations of the Yorùbá Supreme Being in the Ifá oral tradition and Yoruba-based religions of West Africa. She is one of the most popular and venerated Orishas. Oshun is an important river deity among the Yorùbá people. She is the goddess of divinity, femininity, fertility, beauty, and love. She is connected to destiny and divination.
African diaspora religions, also described as Afro-American religions, are a number of related beliefs that developed in the Americas in various nations of the Caribbean, Latin America and the Southern United States. They derive from traditional African religions with some influence from other religious traditions, notably Christianity and Islam.
The Yoruba religion, or Isese, comprises the traditional religious and spiritual concepts and practice of the Yoruba people. Its homeland is in present-day Southwestern Nigeria, which comprises the majority of Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, Kwara and Lagos States, as well as parts of Kogi state and the adjoining parts of Benin and Togo, commonly known as Yorubaland. It shares some parallels with the Vodun practiced by the neighboring Fon and Ewe peoples to the west and with the religion of the Edo people to the east. Yoruba religion is the basis for a number of religions in the New World, notably Santería, Umbanda, Trinidad Orisha, and Candomblé. Yoruba religious beliefs are part of Itàn (history), the total complex of songs, histories, stories, and other cultural concepts which make up the Yoruba society.
Candler School of Theology is one of seven graduate schools at Emory University, located in metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia. A university-based school of theology, Candler educates ministers, scholars of religion and other leaders. It is also one of 13 seminaries affiliated with the United Methodist Church.
Katie Geneva Cannon was an American Christian theologian and ethicist associated with womanist theology and black theology. In 1974 she became the first African-American woman ordained in the United Presbyterian Church (USA).
Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas is an American author and educator. She is associate professor of ethics and society at Vanderbilt Divinity School and the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Floyd-Thomas is a Womanist Christian social ethicist whose research interests include Womanist thought, Black Church Studies, liberation theology and ethics, critical race theory, critical pedagogy and postcolonial studies.
Stephen D. Glazier is an American anthropologist who specializes in comparative religion. Currently, he is a Senior Research Anthropologist at the Human Relations Area Files at Yale University. Since 1976, Glazier has conducted ethnographic fieldwork on the Caribbean island of Trinidad focusing on the Spiritual Baptists, Orisa, and Rastafari. He also publishes on Caribbean archaeology and prehistory. Glazier cataloged Irving Rouse's St. Joseph (Trinidad) and Mayo (Trinidad) collections for the Peabody Museum of Natural History. In 2017, Glazier retired as professor of anthropology and Graduate Faculty Fellow at the University of Nebraska, where he taught classes in general (four-field) anthropology, race and minority relations, and a graduate seminar on the anthropology of belief systems.
Monica A. Coleman is a contemporary theologian associated with process theology and womanist theology. She is currently Professor of Africana Studies and the John and Patricia Cochran Scholar for Inclusive Excellence at the University of Delaware, as well as the Faculty Co-Director Emerita for the Center for Process Studies. Her research interests include Whiteheadian metaphysics, constructive theology, philosophical theology, metaphorical theology, black and womanist theologies, African American religions, African traditional religions, theology and sexual and domestic violence, and mental health and theology. Coleman is an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Jacquelyn Grant is an American theologian, a Methodist minister. Alongside Katie Cannon, Delores S. Williams, and Kelly Brown Douglas, Grant is considered one of the four founders of womanist theology. Womanist theology addresses theology from the viewpoint of Black women, reflecting on both their perspectives and experience in regards to faith and moral standards. Grant is currently the Callaway Professor of Systematic Theology at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta.
Marcia Y. Riggs is an American author, the J. Erskine Love Professor of Christian Ethics, and the Director of ThM Program at Columbia Theological Seminary, a womanist theologian, and a recognized authority on the black woman’s club movement of the nineteenth century. She was one of six Luce Scholars named by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada (ATS) and The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. as Henry Luce III Fellows in Theology for 2017-2018.
The Centre for the Study of World Christianity (CSWC) is a research centre based in New College, the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. It was founded in the University of Aberdeen by Andrew F. Walls as the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World in 1982, but later moved by Walls to the University of Edinburgh in 1986. Its current name was adopted in 2009. The centre is currently directed by Alexander Chow and Emma Wild-Wood.
Emilie Maureen Townes is an American Christian social ethicist and theologian. She is currently Dean and E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School. Townes was the first African-American woman to be elected president of the American Academy of Religion in 2008 and served as president of the Society for the Study of Black Religion from 2012–2016.
E. Brooks Holifield is an American religious historian and the Charles Howard Candler Professor Emeritus of American Church History at Emory University's Candler School of Theology, where he taught until his retirement in 2011. He has been called "a giant among historians of religion."
Mary Shawn Copeland, known professionally as M. Shawn Copeland, is a retired American womanist and Black Catholic theologian, and a former religious sister. She is professor emerita of systematic theology at Boston College and is known for her work in theological anthropology, political theology, and African American Catholicism.
Maureen Warner-Lewis is a Trinidadian and Tobagonian academic whose career focused on the linguistic heritage and unique cultural traditions of the African diaspora of the Caribbean. Her area of focus has been to recover the links between African cultures and Caribbean cultures. She has been awarded multiple prizes for her works, including two Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Awards, the Gold Musgrave Medal of the Institute of Jamaica, and was inducted into the Literary Hall of Fame of Tobago.
Marla Faye Frederick is an American ethnographer and scholar, with focus on African-American religious experience. She is currently the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Religion and Culture at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Her work addresses a range of topics including race, gender, religion and media studies.
Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan is an African-American womanist theologian, professor, author, poet, and an elder in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. She is Professor-Emerita of Religion and Women's Studies and Director of Women's Studies at Shaw University Divinity School. She is the author or editor of numerous books, including the volume Women and Christianity in a series on Women and Religion in the World, published by Praeger.
Wilda C. Gafney, also known as Wil Gafney, is an American biblical scholar and Episcopal priest who is the Right Rev. Sam B. Hulsey Professor of Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. She is specialist in womanist biblical interpretation, and topics including gender and race.
Debra Mubashshir Majeed was an American religious historian, activist and womanist.
Karen Baker-Fletcher is an American theologian and professor notable for her womanist scholarship, particularly on the crucifixion and resurrection. She is currently Professor of Systematic Theology at Southern Methodist University's Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, Texas.
