Almeda M. Wright is Associate Professor of Religious Education at Yale Divinity School. Her research focuses on African American religion, Womanist spirituality, adolescent spiritual development, and the intersections of religion, education, and public life. She is the author of The Spiritual Lives of Young African Americans and editor of Children, Youth, and Spirituality in a Troubling World (with Mary Elizabeth Moore).
Wright provides the most important work on religious education in a generation. The religious activist educator grounded in the lives and histories of Black faith and justice leaders is an identity and vocation that will be taught, shared, and lived by future generations of religious educators. * Patrick B. Reyes, Ph.D., Dean, Auburn Theological Seminary * Teaching to Live convenes a gathering of heroic and prophetic educators across the boundaries of history and ideology. Wright's selection of people such as Baptist Burroughs, Congregational Cleage, Episcopal Cooper, and Methodist Lawson also underscores the ecumenical undercurrent that has nurtured the Black Church as a force for social change. This book is a rich exploration of the intersections of biography, history, and social structure in the lives of these African American Christian educators, all of whom provide models for engaging current struggles involving faith and social justice. * Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies, Emerita *