Originally broadcast at 2 p.m. ET Wednesday, August 3, 2022.

Monica A. Coleman is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Delaware. She spent over ten years in graduate theological education at Claremont School of Theology, the Center for Process Studies, and Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Dr. Coleman has earned degrees from Harvard University, Vanderbilt University, and Claremont Graduate University. She has received funding from leading foundations in the United States, including the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Forum for Theological Education, and the Citizens and Scholars Foundation (formerly Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation), among others.

Answering her call to ministry at 19 years of age, Coleman is an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and an initiate in traditional Yoruba religion.

Dr. Coleman brings her experiences in evangelical Christianity, black church traditions, global ecumenical work, and indigenous spirituality to her discussions of theology and religion. She is the author or editor of six books, and several articles and book chapters that focus on the role of faith in addressing critical social and philosophical issues. Her memoir Bipolar Faith shares her life-long dance with trauma and depression, and how she discovers a new and liberating vision of God.

Her book Making a Way Out of No Way is required reading at leading theological schools around the country, and listed on the popular #BlackWomenSyllabus and #LemonadeSyllabus recommended reading projects.

Dr. Coleman is the co-host (along with writer Tananarive Due) of the popular webinar series Octavia Tried to Tell Us: Parable for Today’s Pandemic, addressing today’s most pressing issues with insights from Afrofuturist literature, process theology, and community values.

Coleman’s strength comes from the depth of her knowledge base and from her experiences as a community organizer, survivor of sexual violence, and as an individual who lives with a mental health challenges.

Coleman speaks widely on mental wellness, navigating change, religious diversity, and religious responses to intimate partner violence. Coleman is based in Wilmington, Delaware, and lives in an intergenerational household where she is an avid vegan cook and cyclist.

About Chautauqua Institution: Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. As a community, we celebrate, encourage and study the arts and treat them as integral to all of learning, and we convene the critical conversations of the day to advance understanding through civil dialogue. CHQ Assembly is the online expression of Chautauqua Institution's mission.