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Hosted by Princeton Theological Seminary President Jonathan Lee Walton, Expanding the Table gathers leading voices in history, theology, and public life to explore questions of faith, leadership, and justice.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 00:06
Welcome to Expanding the Table. A Princeton Theological Seminary series from the Office of the President. I'm Jonathan Lee Walton, the 8th President of the Seminary. And at this table, we gather leading voices in history, theology, and public life to explore questions of faith, leadership and justice. Today's guest is Dr. Almeda M. Wright. Associate Professor of Religious Education at Yale Divinity School. Dr. Wright's research, writing, and teaching sit at the intersection of African American religion, Education. And adolescent spiritual development. In particular, she focuses on ways parents, caregivers, and educators can share faith and values with the next generation. Dr. Wright is the author of Teaching to Live, Black Religion, Activist Educators, and Radical Social Change, published in 2024 with Oxford University Press. And she's the author of The Spiritual Lives of Young African Americans. That was published with Oxford in 2017. Dr. Ray, it is a joy. To have you with us Listen, we know your specialty.
Almeda M. Wright | 01:22
Today. Thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be here.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 01:28
It's formation, Christian formation, youth and young adults. Theological education formation, that could be perceived as one of those squishy terms. I was wondering if you might talk about what formation means for you and your work.
Almeda M. Wright | 01:45
Now, of course, we know formation is an inherited term. It's not necessarily one that I wholeheartedly embrace because it does have lots of messy connotations that come with it and some baggage and some history. But I still use it primarily because instead of like not just collapsing, it would say just development. Because formation and even the term and how I think about it and write about it and see it enacted reminds us of the agency that's in helping to form people. And even the ways that communities and families and churches and ministry leaders and parents and caregivers and Soccer coaches all have a role in helping to shape or to mold or even be in conversation with young people as they are developing and growing and being formed. And so I think about formation a lot.
Sometimes specifically religious formation or Christian formation, but I think about it in general in terms of thinking about the ways that our lives evolve over time, but not just a revolutionary activity, but as we make different choices and we, Try different things and then we grow because of either failing or succeeding or because of the circumstances that are around us. And so I think about formation and have been writing about it for a long time. And in some ways, my thoughts about it have evolved over years. But For me, particularly when I started thinking about formation and religious formation with African-American adolescents, I began thinking about What are the traditions that are important for their well-being and their thriving and how do we invite them or educate them or teach them or form them in those so that they can live and not just live but ultimately flourish and thrive. Thrive.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 03:42
Flourish. Yes.
So you talk about you know, that all formation takes place in complex social contexts, right? You started going there in your research on African Americans. I was, you know, thinking about, you know, this in terms of the role of social location in spiritual formation, just in general.
Almeda M. Wright | 04:02
So when we think about social location in particular, oftentimes people will recognize that when we talk about social location because I study black youth. And they're like, of course, she's gonna talk about what does it mean for race or for class or for age. But I wanna make sure that we put the footnote there that we remind people that while that's a modifier that we often will look at when we look at a minoritized community, All formation is taking place within a social context, whether or not we are aware of it or whether or not we are naming that like, you know, as white theological formation or someone thinking about the cultural of like, what does it mean for us to be in a predominantly Protestant like community or things like that? But in particular for me with thinking about social location and African-American youth, I have been wrestling thinking about what. What communities, what systems of both inclusion and exclusion mean? And what does it mean when young people are cared for in ways that who they are is honored and others who are cared for in ways where they don't know if tomorrow is going to be a thing. And so really having to wrestle with particularly thinking about their spiritual lives, like what does it mean for us to As pastors or teachers or even lay leaders to really think about what would it mean for us to take seriously the concerns of these young people as we design what we preach or what we teach or how we want to accompany them. Okay.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 05:39
I heard you saying, I mean, you talked about cultures of inclusion and exclusion, of course, you know, We like to talk a lot about cultures of inclusion and cultures of belonging. But often... If I'm hearing you correct, we don't think often about what are the cultures of exclusion that are always and already at.
Almeda M. Wright | 05:57
Play? Yes. And so... It's, I mean, we try not to go to too many hotbeds, are cultures of exclusion and they often are the dominant ones in the sense that often when we think about the Christian story and be informed in Christianity, we want to think about how wide we draw or how we draw that circle or how inclusive that table might be.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 06:04
But there.
Almeda M. Wright | 06:21
But we are recognizing that sometimes for good and for ill, there is a way that Christianity says, Not everything's included. And that can be...
You know, in the most like nefarious way. It could be like not everyone's voice is included or not everyone's culture or perspective is included and therefore it can be very limiting. But it can be helpful to think about what are the positive ways that there's this exclusion in the sense of like not Everything from everybody's tradition should be here if you're going to still name it as Christian. And what does it mean for us to form people in a tradition but form them with the skill set to then engage with other.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 07:05
Traditions? Engage across traditions. Being secure and comfortable and confident enough in one's own tradition but being humble And intellectually and spiritually curious enough to engage across traditions.
Almeda M. Wright | 07:17
So there's a lot that's going on there. And I mean, I don't want to get into the weeds too much, but I think there's something particularly for me this in probably the last 10 years that I've been really trying to wrestle with. How do we do this type of formation that doesn't make for rigid Christians? And so I really actually don't like language of conservative or progressive because I think in each of these like spectrums or camps, There's a way that we are teaching people to hold our beliefs loosely. Or to hold them rigidly. And that's part of like my questions around formation and development in terms of like Christian Christianity, particularly in the US context, and really trying to think through how do we help people I think in your words, you were saying be intellectually curious, but to say The way I'm being formed in this tradition, I want to always leave room for the fact that I could be wrong.
Yeah. Yes. I want it to be important and essential but not necessarily so dogmatic that I've got to be like, right, and I will fight you for the rightness versus, wait a minute, is there something in here that allows me to keep growing and learning?
Jonathan Lee Walton | 08:26
It's kind of heresy of Exactly.
Almeda M. Wright | 08:27
Certainty.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 08:30
John Dewey said we need epistemic humility in terms of what we know and how we know it. Well, to talk about this epistemic humility, one of the things that I really appreciate about your work is the ways that you have the courage. To take the views, voices, and perspective of young people seriously. And I actually do call that courage, right? To be able to actually listen, learn from them, and therefore respond. And earlier you were talking about agency. And so I'm wondering if you could just kind of tie that together as it relates to their young adults' role in the formation process.
Almeda M. Wright | 09:09
Yeah. So one of the things that I... By the way, as a researcher, sometimes when you go into a project, you don't ever know where you're going to end up. And I love that, but it's kind of scary work. But one of the things that I think I took away from my first book project was the idea that It is radical to listen to young people. It's really radical to not just give lip service to what they are offering, but to say, if I'm listening, If I'm taking it seriously, then it has to inform All the practices that we do, but how we then respond.
So, for example, oftentimes people will interview a young person or they will include a young person on a committee or like in a conversation. They will take it, get a good clip, get a soundbite and then go on and continue operating as if the young person was. Is not there. And this is not saying like, you know, because I remember there used to be a big thing like, you know, churches where it was like, well, we just need one young person on every committee. You wasting their time, you wasting your time.
Like that's not necessarily the move. If them being there is not going to change how you think about it. And so for me in practice, I was... I had to... Think about their words, and their lived realities, as well as to trust them.
Like, that's one of the things that I have learned over the years where it's like, I can't come in and assume that I've got all the answers and that what they tell me is just an anecdote to make my answer real. Look good. But what if they say something that I hadn't thought about before? Or what if they say something, a young adult says something that blows my way of being faithful out of the water? I've got to trust. Them to be the expert on their experience, but for them to be able to teach to help me do better theology, for me to maybe imagine anew. In the Spiritual Lives of Young African Americans, we, the final chapter that you're having your faculty read, I tell the story of this young woman, Kira, who, by the way, is now an adult and we're grateful and she's doing amazing and big things. I need to probably keep giving parts of my research money to her because she's been this brilliant conversation partner for years. But Sarah. Made me think about abundant life. When abundant life wasn't even a conversation that I was having. She made me think about thriving and flourishing in the face of death-dealing systems When I was like, Is that even possible? And so, In some ways, she called BS on the ways that I'd been theologizing because she was like, you want to write good theology, but I'm over here living it. And how do you trust? Do you trust me enough? - Yeah. To transform you and the way that you're doing this.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 12:25
So you named some of the worst practices, right? Putting a youth on every committee.
Almeda M. Wright | 12:33
It's.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 12:33
A good idea. I'm curious to know some really positive practices that you've seen from communities that have undertaken this work with great intention.
Almeda M. Wright | 12:45
Yeah. I've been trying to really reclaim, particularly from the African-American tradition, practices that have been working in black churches for a long time that we don't amplify. And this, of course, We can go into the whys of that or even why we look at sometimes, you know, mass marketed big youth ministry versus some smaller church youth ministry practices. And one of the things that I have seen and I'm hearing as I'm thinking about this work of reclaiming some of these practices is this idea of apprenticeship.
So instead of just thinking about how do we like, you know, Give a young person a mic or give a young person a job, what does it mean for us to commit To walking with them and naming their gifts or seeing in them and then saying, my job. Is to apprentice you into fully understanding or using this. And so many of us, or at least growing up, I remember so many examples of being apprenticed in the black church. Apprenticing of like, they'd have junior deacons. They would have junior ushers. They would have Folks that were the junior version of these adult, things, right?
Jonathan Lee Walton | 13:54
Big church.
Almeda M. Wright | 13:56
Junior missionaries. And it's funny because they were like, you know, there were often there was a debate of like, well, they didn't have the standalone youth ministry. But in some ways, those young people are still invested and involved in congregational life and religious life because they were apprenticed into that life. They didn't have a pullout special curriculum all the time, but they often were given serious jobs.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 14:22
And it was always an already intergenerational engagement.
Almeda M. Wright | 14:27
Yes. Yes. And there's a way. And so thinking about it.
So this for me is one that I've been wrestling with because I don't know, like you can't take something from one time period and just drop it into a new one. So there are things that have to change about it. Are there ways that it will look different? Are there even ways of like, is this scalable?
Like, are there ways that we could do this for more than just, you know, if you're in a larger membership church versus a small membership church, does this apprenticeship model work? But I think there is something to be said because with that model, just keeping with that for a second, with the model of apprenticeship, what happens with an apprenticeship is that you are actually training someone to be able to do your job. Without you.
So what does it mean as leaders in congregations and the academy for us to always remember simply remember that there's someone who's going to have to do this after me and therefore they've got a , be trained in the but trained in the ways that I make decisions about what I don't And it's a form of really Pushing beyond just like, you know, depositing expertise, but giving people the space, the scaffolding to try some stuff to fail, but in a kind of controlled way.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 15:30
Know. So apprenticeship is already a form of empowerment.
Yeah.
Almeda M. Wright | 15:54
Yeah.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 15:56
The... When I'm thinking about failing, I want to pull on that thread because... As you know, we've been talking a lot about faith, young adults, health, spiritual health, mental health, emotional health, and resilience. And so I would just love even thinking about how we use these varying models of formation to help cultivate positive health outcomes in our young people.
Almeda M. Wright | 16:30
Most of us think about it because we don't really talk about the pandemic anymore, but I think it helped us to remind or to remind a lot of folks around the mental health pandemic and crises that a lot of young people were already wrestling with. And across the board, this was a cross-cultural experience. We were not necessarily isolated. Prepared. To address, respond to the way that isolation was affecting young people, but Other folks on the other side of the equation, they were coming out and saying like not going to school actually was a gift. I didn't have to worry about All of my social anxiety or the ways that being in that space didn't always feel healthy to me. And we've, have been trying, you know, and of course in Connecticut, There are still lots of conversations because there's still not enough therapists for children and young adults.
Like you just cannot find enough to be able to address and respond to. And teachers, I commend them all the time for the type of work that they're trying to do. But in terms of thinking about this and fear and failure and resilience in terms of faith outcome or health outcomes, I often think about the ways that churches. And congregations and need to be another one of those third spaces, not just as a social third space, but a mental health support third space. Again, thinking particularly about my own tradition within the Black church tradition, Often they're narratives that come out of that, of the reality of that space.
Sometimes working for catharsis, but that space being a place where even in simple old school practices of testifying or testimony where people are using these seemingly spiritual practices to help them do a form of narrative therapy where they re-narrate what is happening in their lives and they turn an individual complexity and situation into something that then now has communal resources and communal support to help either support the individual young person or the family around that. And so I've been, you know, wrestling with, again, what do these things look like? And so I, I'm always inspired when we can find a thread that allows for folks to recognize that there's something within their tradition that says perfection is not the only answer. But there's actually space or a whole community of folks who've been trying some stuff and messing it up and thankful to God that God is still on their side and bringing them Exactly.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 19:15
Through. God's grace is still sufficient.
Almeda M. Wright | 19:17
And so there are these like there's this communal story that says we tried some stuff.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 19:22
We're all just crack vessels. Right.
Almeda M. Wright | 19:25
Exactly. That we are, you know, we need to come back and be back on the potter's wheel. And like and so what does it mean? I think we've got to, again, reclaim some of that practice, but really begin to mine traditions for the narratives that we have, as well as the opportunities. First to talk about the quiet things out loud.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 19:48
I, you know... It's clear. That You are a student of history, that you think back across traditions, and that's the beauty. What can we pull across space and time? What are the resources that are available to us? And of course, I think about your book, Teaching to Live, and the ways that you study the lives of these African-American women educators, faith-based educators that were literally trained Holding communities on their shoulders. I would love to just hear how even personally. The figures you study like Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Anna Julia Cooper, how they serve as resources for you and your.
Almeda M. Wright | 20:36
Work? - So to be honest, "Teaching to Live" was a very selfish book. And the reason I say it's a selfish book is because that was the book I most probably needed to read and it wasn't there.
So I had to go write it. And what I'm and I mean, and so I.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 20:52
According to Toni Morrison, that's how the greatest books are.
Almeda M. Wright | 20:54
Produced. Often. I sometimes will dub that book My Love Letter to Black Teachers. Because in the acknowledgments, I just named every black teacher I've ever had, partly because I research and write about folks from the 20th century But I knew to go looking for them because I had been touched. By teachers who saw me, or who trusted me or who were investing in me at very critical points in my life and they transformed it.
So I was like, wait a minute, these folks may not be anomalies. They probably are part of this cadre of what I call activist educators or activist religious educators. And so I wanted to tell some complex stories there. And so I have been inspired, particularly like, I'll give you one example. Anna Julia Cooper is... The rock star inspiration. She lives to be over 100 and spends her entire life Episcopal.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 21:56
Teaching. Tell us a little bit about Anna Judy Cooper. North Carolina.
Almeda M. Wright | 22:01
She's growing. She was born enslaved. And so the only records we have of her being free are post-emancipation.
So we're assuming that You know, she's freed with the Emancipation Proclamation at the end of the Civil War. And so she...
Jonathan Lee Walton | 22:15
And her is.
Almeda M. Wright | 22:15
Parents. Her parents. It's a complicated story. That's what it You want me to tell all the dirt. And we have records of her mother, but there's no reference to her father until the assumption there is the father was her enslaver. And so she is the product, fair skin product of, That kind of relationship of, you know, formerly enslaved mother. And and it's very... Beautiful in some ways, though. Relationship she has with her mother. And it's interesting, the silence around her father. And so she gives lots of credit to the Episcopal Church that forms this school in her community. And she is able to start. She starts kindergarten at about nine, eight or nine years old. Again, there, she starts school... These are paid institutions, and so she has to have a job. And so her first job when she's starting school is to teach.
So she's a peer tutor. But she's tutoring classmates. And she's teaching her mother to read. At the same time.
So she's going... And I lift that story up, but I Always I'm like, this is a thing. This is why education is communal. This is why these teachers are committed to communities because they're recognizing that when I go to school, my whole family goes.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 23:40
My whole family goes to school.
Almeda M. Wright | 23:42
And what does it mean for us to always have that as kind of like a point of reference for how they're doing? As I Yeah.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 23:47
Go, my community goes with me.
Almeda M. Wright | 23:50
And that's, you know, that's her famous quote. Only the black woman can say when and where I enter does the whole race enter with me. And so Anna Julia Cooper was inspirational partly because she goes to St. Augustine's. But so there she experiences the beginning of a lifelong love of learning and teaching. But it's the first place where she experiences sexism.
Yeah. And so it's one of those places where she's like, wait a minute. And it pushes her to become this advocate for women's education alongside of an equal access to any educational track that they wanted to take.
So often, again, at that point in the 20th century, you got folks being guided to say, you can only go this far. If you're a Black woman, you can be a teacher maybe, but that's it. And she was like, what if they want to be a linguist or a mathematician? Because she wants to take upper level math. And they're like, we don't have any classes for women. And she's like, Really? And.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 24:54
So. I recall Anna Julia Cooper. Having a So writing... About men pursuing the ministry and her experience in education that I am sure resonates with women pursuing ministry and professional fields across the board.
Almeda M. Wright | 25:16
Exactly. She has, and by the way, I'm going to paraphrase it, but I commend anybody who's listening or watching to always go back and get her words because she has a way with words because she is a linguist. And so she writes about her experience saying that she's having to struggle to like go, she has to work, she has to do these other things, but any... The gist of the quote is that She says, Any ministry candidate, male ministry candidate, even if they just have a daydream about going into the ministry will be fully financially supported. Curious and ambitious girl. That's the struggles. Great work. Always asking, because she uses language from Dickens, always asking, like Oliver Twist, could I have some more? Could I please just have some more? And it's that kind of language. And by the way, that's recorded in her... Voices of the South. But it's, Coming from a speech that she's making to a group of African-American clergy. I think Methodist Episcopal clergy because she's trying to convince them to support financially Educational tracks, scholarships for black women to be educated.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 26:42
So An institution like Princeton Theological Seminary, Yale Divinity School. This is incredible research. This is about our communities of faith. It's about our young people. In terms of the roles that we can play in theological education. Broadly. What kind of resources or advice, recommendations do you have for us as institutions?
Almeda M. Wright | 27:10
I'm often reminded both from looking in the past and listening to young people to Do the hard work. Of remaining curious about the folks who've come before us, but the folks who are watching and waiting to come after us. And That's Some ways it's a Sankofa kind of move, but there's a way that it's like we can't ever forget our traditions and our heritage, but we can't hold onto them so tightly that there's not room for The critical reflection, the breaking open that young adults will often push us to do, that children will often push us to do because their questions are not our questions. Their curiosities are not our curiosities. But they're equally valued and amazing. When we began to do theological education, recognizing that we've got to hold on to both - Then amazing things can begin to open up.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 28:15
The past Visions of the future. Education itself. The act of learning, like you said, the Sankofa, knowing that the way forward is back through. The very educational task itself is a form of activism. It is a form of formation. It is spiritual development and cultivation.
Almeda M. Wright | 28:41
Yeah, because there's nothing neutral. And education. There's nothing neutral. And theological education. It's always political, and at its best, it's revolutionary.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 28:55
Where do you see hope? Dr. Wright and the emerging when we think about the spiritual lives of young people.
I mean sometimes you read a the statistics, it'll make you just sing the blues. Where are you finding hope now?
Almeda M. Wright | 29:12
I've been... Inspired most recently by Black artists. Young adult artists. And there are ways that they are creating, sometimes speaking a new word, sometimes painting a new word, sometimes dancing a new word. And that for me is a constant reminder that life is continuing. Because the creative thrust for me really is this type of thing where it says, hold up. If people can just create enough space to create beauty, to see beauty, that always gives me hope.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 29:55
Dr. Almeida M. Wright. It's been such a pleasure and joy to have you at this table today.
Almeda M. Wright | 30:02
Thank you so much for having.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 30:03
Me. Thank you for joining us for Expanding the Table. A Princeton Theological Seminary series from the Office of the President. These conversations are one of the ways we live into our mission. Cultivating leaders shaped by faith, scholarship, and compassion. And as well as opening our community to the world. On behalf of all of us at Princeton Seminary, thank you for being a part of this gathering. And until next time, May you continue to find ways to expand the table in your own communities. With faith, integrity, competence, compassion, and joy. One love.