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The annual Gardner C. Taylor Lecture Series sponsored by the Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School seeks to equip ministers and pastoral leaders with new and innovative perspectives to proclaim the Gospel with power and precision in the present age. The series honors the legacy of Gardner C. Taylor, an effective pastor, compelling preacher, and prolific author, and honors the beauty and power of preaching in the Black prophetic Christian tradition. Taylor's written sermons and recordings, with his high capacity to discern the “strange angles” of scripture and spirit, continue to instruct, inform, and inspire. Taylor’s enduring legacy emerges from his fruitful 42 years as senior pastor at Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn, N.Y. During his tenure, he faithfully and effectively served his “present age.”

This year's speaker, Rev. Dr. Braxton D. Shelley, is professor of music, sacred music, and divinity at Yale University, where he is also faculty director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Music and the Black Church.

A specialist in African American popular music, his research and critical interests, while especially focused on African American gospel performance, extend into media studies, sound studies, phenomenology, homiletics, and theology.

His award-winning first book, Healing for the Soul: Richard Smallwood, the Vamp, and the Gospel Imagination, develops an analytical paradigm for gospel music that braids together resources from cognitive theory, ritual theory, and homiletics with studies of repetition, form, rhythm, and meter. His second book, An Eternal Pitch: Bishop G.E. Patterson, Broadcast Religion, and the Afterlives of Ecstasy was published in November 2023 by the University of California Press. His third book, Digital Antiphony: Black Gospel, Social Media, and the Craft of Collectivity is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. 

Rev. Dr. Shelley is the composer of gospel selections including, “Don’t Faint,” “Due Glory,” “Say So”, and “Kept,” which have been ministered at conferences, concerts, and worship services across the country. He is currently embarking on a new recording project titled “Your Name,” which is slated to appear in late 2024.
A native of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Rev. Dr. Shelley received a BA in music and history from Duke University. He also earned an M.Div. and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.