Melva L. Sampson is a professor, preacher, and pastor. She is Assistant Teaching Professor in the Practice of Preaching and Practical Theology at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. Her ministerial credentials span across the Baptist and Presbyterian USA denominations.
Her research interests include Black preaching women’s embodiment, African heritage spiritual traditions, Black girls’ ritual performance, and the relationship between digital proclamation and spiritual formation. She has published articles like, “The Making of Digital Griots and Cyber Assemblies,” and “Digital Hush Harbors: Black Preaching Women and Black Digital Religious Networks,” each address the politics of location and challenge traditional Black Church pulpit authority. Dr. Melva’s published sermons appear in the final collection of Dr. Ella Pearson Mitchell’s Those Preaching Women: A Multicultural Edition and The Sky is Crying: Race, Class, and Natural Disaster.
Popular courses taught by Dr. Sampson include From Jarena Lee to Cardi B: Womanist Proclamation, The Afrocentric Christian Idea, Reparations as a Practical Theological Mode, and Podcasts, Vlogs, and Livestreams: Proclamation in the Digital Age.
She is a leading practitioner in digital Black religion and is the creator of The Pink Robe Chronicles ™ an online spiritual gathering that circumvents interlaced oppressive religious structures, doctrines, and theologies by utilizing womanist and Afrocentric/Afrofuturist values of resistance, recovery, and reflection to curate a liberated and transformative faith-centered community of practice. Her book under the same name will is due out in 2025 under 1517 Media. Since 2016 Dr. Melva has livestreamed over 300 digital sermons and engaged thousands across Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Her words and work are featured in Essence (online), The Grio, The Presbyterian Outlook, and The National Catholic Reporter and The Pink Robe Chronicles are the subject of a half-dozen published scholarly articles. She is the co-founder of the 1Love Festival, a festival in Winston-Salem, NC that centers and celebrates African diasporan history and culture through art, innovation, entrepreneurship, and wellness (www.1lovefestival.com).
In October 2022, The Smithsonian National Museum for African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) acquired and accessioned artifacts from Pink Robe Chronicles into the museum collection. The digital files consist of four Pink Robe Chronicles (sermons) Go Back and Get It; Fight the Power; Press, Prune and Praise; and Wrestling with God. This collection is included in the museum’s archives which host more than 50k artifacts and will be used in its research and exhibitions. Her commentary is also featured in the museum’s first full length documentary gOD-Talk released in October 2023. The film explores the lies of seven Black millennials (Atheist, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Spiritualist, and African Traditional Religion) and their challenges and discoveries with faith in the 21st century. n
Dr. Melva earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Political Science from Virginia Union University; a Master of Arts in Mass Communication from Howard University; a Master of Divinity from Candler School of Theology, Emory University; and a Doctor of Philosophy in Religion with a concentration in Homiletics from the Graduate Division of Religion, Emory University.
