D’Andrea Fanning, M.Div. '23, enjoys an interdisciplinary career as a business owner, consultant, professor, and church minister. She has extensive experience in the public sector, working for 15 years in strategic planning, business analysis, and process improvement for the City of Atlanta, several Fortune 500 corporations, higher education institutions, nonprofits, and churches. She has engaged with Christian audiences across the country as a public speaker, teacher, and workshop facilitator and has recently served as the director of ministry and nonprofit development at Southside Church of Christ in Durham. She is the co-founder of Black and Called, an organization providing mentoring and coaching to Christian creatives and artists of color; an adjunct professor of Bible at Abilene Christian University; and a preceptor at Duke Divinity School. She holds a B.A. in psychology from Georgia State University and an M.Div. from Duke Divinity with certificates in Theology and the Arts, Black Church Studies, and Preaching. During her time at Duke, she was recognized as a Black Church Studies fellow and served as chaplain for the Black Seminarians Union.

Tell us a bit about how you found Duke Divinity School. You mentioned you have a deep heart for spiritual formation and journeying with others as they discern their call into ministry. Did that call on your life begin before Duke Divinity School, or did you find that passion during your time here at Duke?

I did not have a clear idea of what God was doing in my life when I felt a call to pursue theological education. What I knew is that I had been privileged to serve women and young adults for years in various ways, such as in ministry and teaching as well as other leadership capacities. I knew that I absolutely loved the professional journey I had been on as a business analyst and process-improvement specialist. I also knew that I often found myself having deep conversations with my Christian siblings about critical life decisions and spirituality and that I felt a growing desire to work in faith spaces. I gathered those pieces and asked God to guide me to my next step. Through prayer and fasting, I was led to Duke Divinity. I did not have the language of spiritual formation at the time, but that was indeed what I was after. 

You have always been interested in art—you grew up playing instruments, singing, and painting. And you knew you wanted to explore creativity and the spiritual imagination at Duke. How did DITA and Duke Divinity School impact your love for the arts and for theology?

Creativity has always been important to me. Growing up in a family with various artistic gifts, my creative and artistic side was always cultivated. When I arrived at Duke and learned about DITA, I was drawn to the program not from the standpoint of a performer or professional artist but from a theological perspective of cultivation and natural endowment. What is the relationship between God, humanity, and creativity? Why are we creative, and where does it come from? These were questions I wanted to explore, and DITA seemed the perfect place to dig into these ideas. And I found that spiritual imagination and creativity were foundational to how I understand our journey with God and our calling. As I read works by Guthrie, Begbie, St. Bonaventure, and others, I not only gained insight into their theological perspectives of art and creativity, but I was also able to discern and investigate spiritual implications of creative practice. Overall, DITA helped to lead me to the intersection of pneumatology (the study of the Holy Spirit), creativity, Black life, and spiritual formation. 

Was there a particular course during your time at the Divinity School that was especially impactful, both to your artistic practices and to your theological formation?

This is a difficult question because the courses truly built upon each other in very particular ways as I was discerning a path of creative pneumatology. Dr. Dan Train’s "Intro to Theology and the Arts" course was pivotal because it reoriented my imagination around success. Dr. Train helped us extricate success from the material—money, power, and prestige—and see it through a lens of abundance, of personal and spiritual health and thriving. And it made us ask questions about our fundamental makeup, about creativity and the Imago Dei. The directed study course on pneumatology with Dr. Daniel Castelo was also important in wrestling with how creativity and the work of the Spirit go hand in hand—and impact the story of a thriving and good life. Ironically, I took these courses in my first semester and last semesters at Duke Divinity, respectively, so they really encapsulate the fullness of what I learned at DITA and point to how the certificate builds on core concepts.
 

When I arrived at Duke Divinity School and learned about DITA, I was drawn to the program not from the standpoint of a performer or professional artist but from a theological perspective of cultivation and natural endowment. What is the relationship between God, humanity, and creativity? Why are we creative, and where does it come from? These were questions I wanted to explore, and DITA seemed the perfect place to dig into these ideas. 

Prior to coming to Duke, you worked in Atlanta and Dallas as a strategic consultant and business analyst for corporate and government entities, and now you are the co-founder of Black and Called, a company that provides spiritual coaching and professional resources for Christian people of color. Tell us a bit about your experience working in corporate and public settings. Did your time at Duke and DITA impact or change the way you think about vocation, calling, and entrepreneurship? 

My time at Duke and DITA absolutely impacted the ways I conceive of vocation, calling, and entrepreneurship. In my professional career, I became proficient in determining organizational goals, assessing processes, and implementing best strategies for success. But I knew something was missing: the framework was oriented toward material and monetary success. And that’s what DITA reordered. "Intro to Theology" was crucial in this process, but all the courses and programming at DITA provided me with a fundamental language and framework for calling and achievement that challenged the mainstream. And now I try to give that framework to others. A core aspect of my work at Black and Called, and really all of my work, is helping our clients develop a framework for calling that is undergirded by a creative-pneumatological lens, a lens that was sparked by my time with DITA.

You also work in pedagogy—you are an adjunct professor at Abilene Christian University, where you teach courses on the Holy Spirit and the Black Church. Tell us more about this work. What does the course consist of? And how did DITA, if at all, impact your teaching practice?

Just a few months after graduating, I was grateful for ACU’s invitation to develop an undergraduate course at the intersection of my work in pneumatology and Black life, which resulted in the “Holy Spirit and the Black Church” course. This work offered me the opportunity to synthesize my years of theological education into a thesis of sorts. I drew from themes and concepts that I gathered at Duke Divinity and DITA, such as scriptural and spiritual imagination, Imago Dei, the liberative and creative work of God, participation with God through making of art/culture/ life, prophetic embodiment and preaching, and more. It was a really powerful course, and students were very engaged. I’m looking forward to teaching it again in the future and would love to take the course elsewhere as well. When you explore questions of creativity and art in a theological context, incredible insights are yielded. 

You also work as a consultant with Dr. Jung Choi and the Global and Intercultural Formation department, where you review curriculum for efficacy and creativity and help build the school’s partnerships with international institutions. How has this work impacted your spiritual formation? And how, if at all, do you reference and use your theology and arts coursework in this role?

I am in the early stages of this role and can only provide initial answers to this question, but one example of using my creative coursework comes to mind. My final project for the "Intro to Theology and the Arts" course was an extended visual commentary on the story of Hagar in Genesis 16. I used several pieces of visual art as well as song lyrics alongside exegesis to enliven the story. I found the process incredibly rich and have incorporated that assignment into the curriculum for an international course at the Divinity School, and the response has been wonderful. Students from all over the world have been able to access scripture this way, and it’s been amazing to see the art called into conversation with the Bible. I hope to integrate this sort of work into various other courses. And I’m actually in the process of commissioning a larger visual commentary with Black artists that is a multiyear project, and I’m sure that will be profound too. As I said before, incredible insights are yielded when you look at the Bible with art in hand.

We have a final line of inquiry, as always: What advice would you give to incoming students interested in theology and the arts and the certificate? Is it worth pursuing the certificate even if your professional career takes you elsewhere? And what are the benefits of an interdisciplinary program and career, like yours?

The DITA program and certificate are amazing resources for spiritual formation and exploration. Whether you consider yourself as creative/artistic or not, this track thoughtfully invites you to broaden the ways in which you view and engage with God. It challenges rigid ideas regarding ways of knowing God and others, exercises your muscles to make space for creativity in your life and theology, and invites you to more deeply explore the mystery and expansiveness of God. In this way, the tools gained from this work are quite translatable to various fields and industries, and I found the certificate a core experience that has ushered me into a beautiful, fulfilling, and meaningful life of calling.