Dr. Joy J. Moore will bring her wealth of knowledge and experience to the Hoosier state this summer as she joins the staff of Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University as associate professor of homiletics and Christian ministry.
Moore, who comes to Indiana from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, is an ordained Elder in the West Michigan Conference of the United Methodist Church. While at Fuller, she served as an assistant professor of preaching and was the founding associate dean of the William E. Pannell Center for African American Church Studies. Prior to that, Moore served as associate dean for Black Church Studies and Church Relations at Duke University, where she also was a visiting professor of preaching.
The Recorder caught up with Moore to discuss her life and experiences as a Black woman in theology and academics, as well as her future in Indiana. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper: Tell us about your background in ministry and theology. What brought you to this point?
Moore: I am excited to be returning to the Midwest. Chicago is my home. In truth, what brings me back is my mom. Her health is declining and I’m an only child, so as much as I hoped she’d come out to California, she’s bringing me back home. I like to say that I had the privilege of being raised in a Christian home and a part of a Christian community that taught us our responsibility as Christians in the world. It’s not that I have this celestial ATM that fights my enemies and hits them with lightning rods but rather that we are image bearers of God and God’s good. We were taught as kids to be ambassadors for Christ. It was a privilege to be raised in my community on the south side of Chicago, and several of us still keep in contact. We were in a small town in the middle of the big city. My grandmother was ordained in the Baptist church. I was surrounded by this witness to the promising goodness of God.
You have had decades of experience in both the church and academic sectors. When did you first decide to go into ministry work, and how did you know this was a good fit for you?
When I was a preteen I said, “OK, I’ll do this, I’ll go into ministry,” which sounded like a good idea, being raised in the church and all. Then I realized, when you go to high school and you tell people you’re gonna be a preacher, you’re not going to be real popular. I went and kind of renegotiated the contract with God. I said, “You must have meant teach, right? Not preach?” I got my undergrad in elementary education and taught sixth grade math. I thought that I had landed there and realized the issues that the kids were facing, even though I was a kid myself in my early 20s, the most important thing I could do wasn’t just getting them into algebra by high school. I realized that the issues they were dealing with then were life threatening, and that the promise of God I’d been graced with was the best thing I could offer. I got back involved with the church. The church I was in in Evanston, Illinois, required that we go to seminary if we were to be leaders in the church. I went to Garrett, a Methodist seminary. I said to God, I’ll get involved, but I won’t quit my job or move. Those were my conditions. I thought I could put limits on God, because I didn’t want to do this preach thing. I realized at Garrett that my theological perspective was Wesleyan. That was the beginning of this journey that led me eventually to being ordained in the United Methodist Church, and my credentials are in Michigan, where I served as pastor.
What was pastoring like for you?
I enjoyed working in a local church and pastoring those congregations. In west Michigan where I served, it was primarily Anglo, so I found myself in cross-racial ministry. I sometimes say I have the experience of being in a gap in history, because it wasn’t as bad as some experiences we have today. The things we’ve experienced in the past decade, it’s clearly haunting for many people of color right now. I pastored in suburban churches and in rural congregations in Michigan. I had kind of a gamut of experiences, yet I still had this desire to go back to the campus. I like to say that I got my first couple of jobs according to my birth certificate. I was invited to go to Kentucky and attend Asbury Seminary to do their ethnic ministry and women’s ministry program. While there I was encouraged to get my Ph.D. and apply for a faculty position. I took that opportunity and went to London, England, and got my Ph.D. in practical theology and was then invited to Duke Divinity School to work as an administrator. The dean asked me to do the Black Church Studies program, and that’s where Fuller found me.
Tell me more about this “gap” in history, as you describe it.
The church that I went to as a child that was most formative for me was pastored by a woman. I was ordained by a woman in Michigan. There was never a question (regarding womanhood) for me in accepting this call to ministry. My only hesitation was as a teen wanting to be popular. When I teach preaching, I tell the women that their primary role is to offer the hope of God made known in Jesus Christ. When they look out into a congregation and they see predominately people who have only seen men in the pulpit, just their being there shows the world has changed.
Fuller was a bit of a change of pace from Duke, I presume. What was that experience of moving from one coast to the other?
I was thrilled to see the diversity there, and I enjoyed the weather. I came out and I was captivated by the community and I didn’t expect as vibrant a church as I found. They had for 40 years been running a Black pastors program and wanted to turn it into a center, and so I accepted the opportunity to come here in the fall of 2012. 2014 was the 40th anniversary of the program, and in January 2015, we launched the William E. Pannell Center for African-American Church Studies. Panell, who is identified as an evangelical Christian, wrote a book The Coming Race Wars?: A Cry for Reconciliation specifically targeting the evangelical community.
That reminds me of the movement being led by Rev. William Barber and the Repairers of the Breach. Did you interact with him while at Duke?
Absolutely. I had an opportunity while at Duke to work with him and actually left just as he was beginning the Moral Monday gatherings in North Carolina. Several of my colleagues continued to be active in that work, because the realities that are true in North Carolina are spreading across our nation.
You’ll be at Indiana Wesleyan in the summer. What does this move mean to you personally?
I had known about Wesleyan from my time at Asbury. A lot of students from Indiana Wesleyan and from the Wesleyan denomination came there for school, because there was no Wesleyan Seminary. I actually watched as Wesley was established, and I greatly appreciated the intentionality with which this institution was being created. I particularly respected the fact that it was interdisciplinary. It came full circle. Even though Fuller is more reformed from a theological context, William Pannell was Wesleyan. I realized that this conversation about reconciliation and being the people of God across lines of diversity and this hope that needs to be brought to a hostile world has been very well articulated through the theology of John Wesley. Our society definitely needs to understand how all God’s children can live together. The Wesleyan Church speaks that message most clearly.
