Dr. Valerie Bridgeman is Dean and Vice President of Academic Affairs, as well as Associate Professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible at Methodist Theological School of Ohio. She also is founding president and CEO of WomanPreach! Inc. —the premiere non-profit organization that brings preachers to full prophetic voice. Dr. Bridgeman has lectured or taught in some of the nation’s premier seminaries and divinity schools. She has been in licensed or ordained ministry since 1977. Some of her publications include “Interpreting the Bible in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter: The Gideon Story and Scholarly Commitments,” in Second Wave Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible, published in 2019; “’A Long Ways from Home’: Displacement, Lament, and Singing Protest in Psalm 137,” in Perspectives in Religious Studies, 2017; and “‘I Will Make Boys Their Princes’: A Womanist Reading of Children in the Book of Isaiah,” 311-327, in Womanist Interpretations of the Bible: Expanding the Discourse, 2016. She is a regular contributor to workingpreacher.org and writes regularly for the Journal for Preachers. She currently is completing a commentary on Hosea with Dr. Cheryl Kirk-Duggan and will write the commentary on Job, both in the Wisdom Commentary series. She also is co-editor of a volume on Womanist methodologies, with Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, under Fortress Press.
Dr. Bridgeman is active on several boards, including the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, the editorial board for Homiletic, and the College of Affirming Bishops and Faith Leaders of the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries. She was inducted into the Society for the Study of Black Religion in 2007 and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Collegium of Scholars and Preachers at Morehouse College in 2010. She also is an active member of the Society for Biblical Literature, where she currently serves on the Committee for Women in the Profession. Her other professional guilds include the American Academy of Religion, the Black Religious Scholars Group, the Academy of Homiletics, and the Society for the Arts in Religious and Theological Studies.
Dr. Bridgeman is a graduate of Baylor University, with a Ph.D. in biblical studies (Hebrew Bible concentration) and secondary studies in ethics. She received her Master of Divinity from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and her BA in Communication and Religion from Trinity University (San Antonio). She is a peace activist and advocate for human rights. ~Edit as needed ~ Updated January 2022
