| Willie James Jennings | |
| Birth Date: | April 29, 1961 |
| Spouse: | Joanne Browne |
| Alma Mater: | Calvin College Fuller Theological SeminaryDuke University |
| Workplaces: | Duke UniversityYale University |
| Notable Works: | The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race |
| Honorific Prefix: | The Reverend Dr. |
Willie James Jennings (born April 29, 1961) is an American theologian, known for his contributions on liberation theologies, cultural identities, and theological anthropology. He is currently an associate professor of systematic theology and Africana studies at Yale University.
Jenning gained his B.A. in religion and theology at Calvin College in 1984, and his M.Div in Fuller Theological Seminary in 1987. He completed his Ph.D. in religion, with a concentration on theology and ethics, at Duke University in 1993, supervised under Geoffrey Wainwright. His Ph.D. dissertation topic is "Reclaiming the Creature: Anthropological Vision in the Thought of Athanasius of Alexandria and Karl Barth."[1]
From 1990 to 2015, Jennings worked at Duke University Divinity School and taught theology and black church studies there,[2] before he was appointed associate professor of systematic theology and Africana studies at Yale in 2015.[3] He is an ordained Baptist minister and has served as interim pastor for several North Carolina churches.
In 2010, Yale University Press published Jennings's The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race.[4] The book is a study of the circumstances and theology precipitating Christian participation in racism and colonialism.[5] Syndicate editor-in-chief Christian Amondson considered it a "bold, creative, and courageous critique" of supersessionism and its entanglement in socially constructed ideas about race.[6] Carroll College professor Eric Dayl Meyer called the book "a significant contribution to academic theology". For writing The Christian Imagination, Jennings received the American Academy of Religion's 2011 award for the best book in constructive theology and the 2015 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. In 2017, the Belief Bible commentary series released Jennings's Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, a volume the journal Horizons called "musical and aesthetically charged" and recommended to scholars of race and postcolonialism.[7]