Pamela Lightsey

Pamela Lightsey is the Associate Dean for Community Life and Lifelong Learning and Clinical Assistant Professor of Contextual Theology and Practice. She is a scholar, social justice activist, and military veteran whose academic and research interests include: classical and contemporary just war theory, Womanist theology, Queer theory and theology, and African American religious history and theologies. An ordained elder in the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church, Pamela pastored an urban church on the south side of Chicago, has done work for several UM general agencies and has strong connections within several mainline denominations. She has been a member of the Pan Methodist Commission for the last two quadrennials.

She currently co-chairs the American Academy of Religion’s Womanist Approaches to Religion and Society Group. She is a member of the Executive Committee for the Soul Repair Project, which studies the role of moral injury in veterans. The project is funded by several sources including a Lilly Endowment grant and is directed by feminist scholar, Dr. Rita Nakashima Brock.

Pamela’s publications include “Reconciliation,” in Radical Evangelical (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company) and “If There Should Come a Word” in Black United Methodists Preach! (Abingdon Press).