Why Teach Religion?: Eric Lewis Williams

Eric Lewis Williams, Ph.D. is Director of the Office of Black Church Studies and Assistant Professor of Theology and Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School. 

Williams quotes Zora Neale Hurston, "I was born with God in my house." Hear a scholar's story of having been raised in a Pentecostal household, mentored into the scholarship of religion with no contradiction, and working as a professor, museum curator, and higher education administrator. Williams' journey is one of curiosity, boldness, and creativity.

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SPEAKER_01 0:06

Welcome to Dialogue on Teaching, Wabash Center's podcast series. I am Nancy Lynn Westfield, Director of the Wabash Center. Paul Myrie is our sound engineer. It is my great pleasure to welcome to the conversation today, Dr. Eric Lewis Williams. Dr. Williams is Director in the Office of Black Church Studies, as well as Assistant Professor of Theology and Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School. Thank you, Eric, for being here. Welcome.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Thank you so much. I'm grateful to be

SPEAKER_01 0:35

here. Thank you for having me. Let's start with the start. Where do you come from, Eric, and why in the world are you studying religion?

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Thank you for that. It's a great question. I, like so many of the great people of this nation, I hail from the beautiful state of Illinois. though i'm not from chicago i'm actually from rockford illinois my parents migrated to illinois my father from mississippi my mother from arkansas and uh is there in the words of zora neil hurston i was born with god in my house my father had um come under the influence of the um of Pentecostalism, what they call it back in Mississippi, where he was from, the Sanctified Church. And my mother was raised as a Methodist. But when they got together and married, my parents raised us in the Church of God in Christ. And I think in my home and within the church is where I... my interests in religion took hold of me. A lot of things that I witnessed in church, the power of the music, the drama of the worship, the kinds of social teachings, of course, and then my parents, their teachings, and the emphasis that was placed on Scripture and those kinds of things kind of got to me. And I wanted to, as I continued to grow and meet others from other traditions, I was impressed by their forms of devotion and the ways in which their traditions and their upbringings in some ways resembled, in some ways were dissimilar to mine. And so it kind of gave me a kind of curiosity about religion and the force that religion exerted upon communities and upon families. And so I, through a kind of roundabout way, I came back to the study of religion after undergrad at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where I studied communications and sociology.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

But you could have gotten at similar questions that you get at in religion through anthropology, through cultural studies, through sociology, like you said. Why religion, right? I'm

SPEAKER_00 3:42

pushing, why religion? I appreciate that question, and you're absolutely right. I think part of it was, you know, I didn't have a roadmap. I don't come from a tradition where people, it's a natural inclination of people who have theological questions to go to seminary. And so to be completely honest, it probably was in undergrad, I joined a church in the city of Chicago, the St. Luke Church of God in Christ. It was there that I came under the influence of the late Dr. David Daniels, who was a professor of church history and world Christianity at McCormick Seminary. Daniels was one of the associate ministers on the staff at our church. He had been also raised in the Church of God and Christ, but he ended up going to Bowdoin College for undergrad. Then he went on to Yale Divinity School, and then he went to Union Seminary and did a PhD in church history with Robert Handy and James Melvin Washington. He was one of the very faithful ministers in our church, but when he would teach or when he would preach, he brought so much with him to um to the work and i remember um being very impressed with him and i wanted to have a conversation with him and i remember the day i asked him after um after a course that he taught and what they had they called it the midweek um bible institute but they would do other things besides bible and he had taught a course on um on C.H. Mason and the history of the Church of God in Christ. But he brought so much with him to his teaching that I had never heard anything like that before, to be honest. And so I asked him after that term was over, do you teach like this at the seminary? I remember asking him that. And his words to me were, you should come and see. And I went to something called... I am inquiry into ministry at McCormick Seminary. I was an undergrad then, but I stayed on campus, on McCormick's campus that weekend. And I was deeply moved by what I experienced there. And my plan was to go to law school. But after that, I figured that I should go to seminary and maybe do law school afterwards, but I never made it to law school.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

So David Daniels made it possible for you not to be caught up in Pentecostals are not scholars.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Oh, 100%. You

SPEAKER_01 6:41

know, that's the rumor. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00 6:42

that is a rumor, though it should be dispelled. Because once I met him, he introduced me to so many scholars that were around the country, like people like Robert Franklin and people like Jim Forbes and people like Adrian Israel, who was at Guilford College at the time. So many, Donald Wheelock, so many others that he, who came through the revolution with him. And he exposed me to that literature. Benny Goodwin, he began to expose me to the literature and let me know that this was a religious tradition that had been understudied and that there was space And so I began to, in addition to studying Black church studies, Black theology, I began to study Black Pentecostalism as well, which is one of the areas that I'm still working in today.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

So are you surprised you're a teacher now, or was that always a part of your scholarship?

SPEAKER_00 7:54

It's quite surprising to me. You know, actually, I thought that if I went to seminary, I probably would become a pastor. That's just what I thought. But it was while I was in my readings, while I was in seminary, that I came in contact with a scholar by the name of William Clare Turner Jr., who was here at Duke Divinity, where I teach now, who had been a student of Charles Long and C. Eric Lincoln.

SPEAKER_03 8:28

So

SPEAKER_00 8:29

he studied sociology and religion and history of religions. And what was significant about that is that when I read his stuff, his categories were just so different than the categories I had been exposed to in seminary because he was, you know, he's working in history of religions, but asking his questions within that discipline. And one day I decided, after I had read several articles of his, I called him. I just said, I'm just going to call his office. He answered the phone. I don't know what I'm going to say to him, but I'm going to tell him that I want to know where his categories are coming from.

SPEAKER_03 9:06

And

SPEAKER_00 9:08

I told him he answered the phone. I told him my name, told him where I was from. I told him how I heard about his scholarship. How old were you? How old were you in that boldness? It was probably my second. So I went straight into seminary after undergrad. So my second year of seminary. And I just asked him, I said, I just want to know, like, what do you read? Where are these categories coming from? And he laughed and told me that he was a student of Charles Long. And so his questions are probably a little different than a church historian. And I began to talk to him and he told me that he was going to be presenting at the American Academy of Religion. conference, which was in Nashville. I told him that that semester I was in Atlanta studying at the ITC for a semester. And he told me that if you, I'm sure there are people from your institution that will come, but if you're willing to come to Nashville, that we can talk some more. Went to Nashville, and that's where I met him. And he began to talk to me about the THM program. And I actually came to Duke I was accepted into the THM program, though after my year was up, I wanted some more here. So I asked, Dr. Willie Jennings was the associate dean at the time. And I remember writing to him and asking him if he would allow me to reclassify from the THM to the MDiv, to which he replied that that is the wrong direction, that one usually goes from MDiv to THM. And so I wrote him back and said, but this is something I really want to do. I've gained a lot. I have another angle of vision after being here, after leaving McCormick Seminary. And I'd like to stay. And he told me that if this is what you want to do, I will allow you to do it. And so he gave me the permission. I reclassified. And I had a year where I just kind of took the courses I wanted to take at Duke, and that was really good for me. And it kind of gave me a desire to go on to further doctoral studies, which were doctoral studies.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Many of our colleagues, by the time they've been through the formation or the deformation of a PhD program, have lost their curiosities. When I talk to you, you have not lost your curiosities. Why not? Why are you still, you know what I mean? Why? You still have this desire, this passion, this almost wide-eyed, isn't the world an interesting place approach to your teaching and to your scholarship.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

You know, and I appreciate you saying that. And it's something that I don't think about a lot, but I can tell you that I'm learning. I'm still learning new things. I'm still finding new sources. And in this age in which we live, this digital age, I'm finding things that I didn't know existed. And so I have to rethink things. So I think that's what keeps me going, keeps me interested because I'm still learning. I'm still discovering how much I don't know. I'm still encountering people from radically different disciplines who are raising questions that intrigue me and that cause me to want to engage them in conversation. So it's been a really beautiful way for me, religion and theology, and I didn't know that this world existed, so I always credit David Daniels and William Turner and my teachers for Afe Adogame who was my doctoral advisor for exposing me to worlds that I did not know existed. I

SPEAKER_01 13:13

mean, it shows the power of mentoring, right? It shows the power of formation in relationship and not just information for information's sake, right? That we learn and we are nurtured by the people who we are around and the fact that you went out and sought folks to help you live into your contradiction of, and it's not a contradiction of Pentecostalism, but we know the understudied nature of Pentecostalism. So the fact that you found folks to help you in that conversation, because many people would have jettisoned their Pentecostal traditions for a scholarship and you didn't do that.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

You know, it's been, once I found people who were raising different questions about the tradition, I mean, I continued to, you know, read widely in Black religion, Black church studies. Then, of course, my time in the museum, I was kind of projected headlong into religion and material culture. I still carry these interests with me, and I still want to teach in these areas, and I still want to learn in these areas.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

So you mentioned the museum casually. For our listeners who don't know, tell our listeners what the museum is. It's only one of the most influential museums in the world. But go ahead. I'll let you tell them. Go ahead. So after

SPEAKER_00 14:44

I finished my doctoral degree, I worked as a lecturer at Harvard University for nearly two years. And then I went to work at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture as curator of religion. And I stayed there for right at seven years before coming to Duke. And at the museum, that was a wonderful, wonderful experience. They were interested. Normally, in kind of museum settings, curators are individuals that have a two-year degree in museum studies. You could have an undergraduate degree in botany, zoology, anything. But if you go to a museum, they want you to enter a museum studies program, like in Hopkins, Harvard has one. A number of schools have them. And you study two years, and you get a master's in museum studies, and then one can become a curator, which is just the standard. But at the African American Museum, they wanted subject experts in each of the fields of curation. And so they wanted scholars with PhD level training to serve as the curators. And I have become very interested in the work of Rex Ellis, who he had served for a time at Colonial Williamsburg. He taught at Hampton University. But when the museum was about to open, he went to the Smithsonian. Ellis was a pastor, and he was given to kind of religious themes and that kind of thing. But it was through him that funds were secured through the Lilly Endowment to launch a center for the study of African-American religious life, which would be housed in the museum. And they would hire curators and staff through the generosity of Lily. And I was fortunate to be hired after the director, the first curator.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

And talk about the exhibit that's still up, even though you've moved to Duke.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Okay, thank you. So I have been at Duke, I guess probably 18 months. But prior to my coming, my last major project at the museum was, I curated an exhibition entitled Spirit in the Dark, Religion and Black Music activism and popular culture. It was in the, it is in the Stafford Gallery on the second floor, and it was to be there for a half a year, but to my to my surprise and to my- Delight, to my delight. Right, right. To my surprise and to my delight. The exhibition has been extended maybe three or four times, and it is still on display there on the second floor. So though I left the museum, I'm still often called back there by groups and organizations to come and talk about my exhibition, which, if I could just give this plug, that for those of you that are not able to go to Washington, one of the things, one of the initiatives at the Smithsonian was the Searchable Museum Project. where if you enter Spirit in the Dark Searchable Museum, one can see the entire exhibition. All of the objects have been photographed. Everything is there. One can see it and access it through the internet. So Spirit in the Dark Searchable Museum Smithsonian, and you can see that. So

SPEAKER_01 18:52

it's accessible, right? It's about making this work accessible. And how many people, most scholars yearn for a couple hundred people to buy their books. Some of the big dog scholars yearn for a couple thousand people to buy their books. So I already know, right? How many people have seen your Spirit in the Dark exhibit at the Smithsonian?

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Yes, it's amazing because now we're... We're over 700,000 and we're hoping that we could hopefully get to a million. That's my dream before that exhibition comes down. So if you can just stop by and just dip your toe into the threshold, you will be counted. So we

SPEAKER_01 19:42

talk about what is the scholar's work for the public? That's one of the things that is being grappled with. It's always been grappled with, I think particularly being grappled with now. And for me, your journey and particularly your work at the Smithsonian and certainly your work at Duke now is about the scholarship of religion in the public and that we have to have, can have, need to have language that meets the public, questions that consider the curiosities of the public. So our scholarship has some meaning in a place where people are asking questions about religion, right? Sometimes scholarship pretends like only scholars have questions of religion when that's not the case. So I applaud you for creating an exhibit, creating your work toward the questions of the public without compromising your scholarship.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

You know, one of the things that I learned in that work The work that informed the Lilly Endowment has involved itself in a number of museum projects around the country. And the reason, the scholarship that they're reading and the research that they're reading, it bears out this fact that public trust in kind of historic kinds of places of religious authority or religious education is waning, but a public trust is actually increasing in museums and cultural institutions. And so Lilly launched a major initiative on museums and the public understanding of religion. And so they realize that museums are becoming kind of frontline kinds of sites for religious understanding. And they have supported that generously through not just the National Museum, but museums around the country.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

And those are pedagogical sites, right? They're not just sites of entertainment, but they are sites of education. They are sites of activism. They are sites where people go to network together and to learn with these lofty questions. So it is a natural place for us to want to gravitate to as scholars.

SPEAKER_00 22:07

In fact, I was just with the secretary, Lonnie Bunch. He was here at, in fact, he spoke at North Carolina Central. And then he also spoke at Duke, at the law school, and then for the history department that morning. But he was talking about when people say that they refer to the project as an African American history museum, he always likes to reframe that and say that this is an American history museum with the story being told through the African American lens. That this story, he says, is larger than African Americans, and it's too large for African Americans. This is American history, and that's his approach. And I thought that was quite a powerful approach. Well,

SPEAKER_01 23:02

it was Lonnie Bunch that changed and hired you to say, we need content experts, not just curation experts, right? So that's still a part of the Bunch vision about how museums need to help the public, right? That's all a part of how he's moving in the world. And I'm glad he found you and hired you and gave you this platform. Thank you so much. Please come back anytime. Please continue to work with the Wabash Center. We might have a museum pedagogy project in the offing. So, right, everybody stay tuned because Eric Williams is a part of the citizenship of the Wabash Center. Thank you, Eric, so much.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Thank you, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

To our listeners, the Wabash Center website is the place. Look on our website for details concerning our workshops, for details concerning our resources like our blogs and our journal on teaching, as well as our podcasts. Also on our website is information about our regranting program. A special thanks to podcast producer, Rachel Mills, and the music which frames our podcast is the original composition of Paul Myrie. Wabash Center for more than 30 years is exclusively funded by Lilly Endowment Incorporated. And we are out. How was that, Paul?