Published September 20, 2023

Two new directors for houses of study have joined the Duke Divinity faculty this year: the Very Rev. Timothy Kimbrough, Jack and Barbara Bovender Professor of the Practice of Anglican Studies will direct the Anglican Episcopal House of Studies (AEHS); and the Rev. Dr. Eric Lewis Williams, assistant professor of theology and Black Church studies will direct the Office of Black Church Studies (OBCS).

The houses of study at Duke Divinity School are important locations for spiritual and ministerial formation, providing both vocational training and discernment alongside real-world experience for innovative leadership in the church and the world. The houses help prepare students for service and ordination in the communities and denominations where they are called to serve—they advise on curricular and extra-curricular needs, counsel and prepare candidates for judicatory examinations or interviews, and connect students with mentors. The houses also deliver a range of programs for the school, university, and wider community that includes worship services, lecture series, study days, and more.

Kimbrough and Williams bring experience in pastoral ministry, scholarship, community leadership, preaching, history, music, and more. They will strengthen the capacity of their respective houses and Duke Divinity School to provide vocational formation for students and to build bridges between the gifts and resources found in scholarship and service that will bless the church, academy, and the world.

Eric Lewis Williams

Director of the Office of Black Church Studies
Assistant Professor of Theology and Black Church Studies

For Williams, this appointment is a homecoming of sorts—he earned his M.Div. from Duke Divinity School before going on to earn a Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of Edinburgh (Scotland). He is an ordained minister in the Church of God in Christ, and most recently served as the curator of religion at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. He was the co-editor of the seminal work T&T Clark Handbook of African American Theology, and he curated the exhibition Spirit in the Dark: Religion in Black Music, Activism, and Popular Culture (ongoing through April 21, 2024).

Eric Lewis Williams, director of the Office of Black Church Studies and assistant professor of theology and Black Church studies, in black shirt and black rimmed glasses
Eric Lewis Williams, director of the Office of Black Church Studies and assistant professor of theology and Black Church studies at Duke Divinity School

“Duke Divinity School was for me a place of profound intellectual and theological development,” Williams said. “In a real sense, my time in Durham can be characterized as a time of reawakening to faith and life. Though I came to Duke already having earned a graduate degree in theological studies, Duke’s theological orientation, its deep, ecumenical character and the sheer brilliance and keen spiritual sensibilities of the faculty that guided my journey, created a context for my own gifts to be called forth. This reality launched my academic career and catalyzed my own ministerial and intellectual formation. 

“What interested me most about returning to Duke to join the faculty is that as a teacher, I want to help create similar kinds of transformative theological learning experiences for my students as they prepare to serve the church in our rapidly changing world. As director of OBCS, I see my work as an opportunity to serve the students, the church, and the academy. Through my courses, programming, research, publications, strategic partnerships and pastoral presence, I desire to be a resource to my students that have embarked on this tremendous journey of faith seeking understanding.”

The very presence and work of the OBCS within the context of the Divinity School serves as a reminder of God’s love for the world, and God’s desire to establish a church within the earth, comprised of individuals from all nations. The existence and work of the OBCS also forces individuals preparing to serve the American church to confront a past that was less than perfect, and envision a new kind of human community. The OBCS provides courses, programs, and other educational and learning opportunities to help students of the Divinity School prepare for a new world that is coming, yet is already present.

With respect to my own formation, sustained attention to history helps me remain clear-eyed and sober concerning  the social, political and historical forces that have shaped the context in which the Black church in North America finds itself today. As a  theologian, the gospel constrains me and my training enables me to plumb the depths of the Christian tradition for resources that provide the church liberative theological visions, which calls us away from our idols, and liberates us to live in ways that are freer, bigger and more loving.

These liberating visions beckon the church to more capacious ways of thinking and living, and to deeper levels of love, justice, and service. The Black church for me is caught up in this ennobling vision.  What a marvelous vocation!

The Rev. Eric Lewis Williams, Ph.D.

Timothy Kimbrough

Director of Anglican Episcopal House of Studies
Jack and Barbara Bovender Professor of the Practice of Anglican Studies

Timothy Kimbrough, director of the Anglican Episcopal House of Studies and the Jack and Barbara Bovender Professor of the Practice of Anglican Studies, enjoys cycling around Durham.
Timothy Kimbrough, director of the Anglican Episcopal House of Studies and the Jack and Barbara Bovender Professor of the Practice of Anglican Studies, enjoys cycling around Durham.

Like Williams, Kimbrough is also an alumnus, having earned both his B.A. and M.Div. degrees at Duke. He has also served as consulting faculty at Duke Divinity School for over two decades, teaching courses in Anglican studies for students preparing for ordination and ministry in The Episcopal Church and other Anglican traditions. He is an ordained priest and has served congregations in North Carolina, South Carolina, New Jersey, Tennessee, South Africa, and the Philippines. Most recently he was the dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Nashville, Tenn.

“Time in the student body of the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences and the Divinity School shaped me in ways I’m still discovering,” said Kimbrough. “The opportunity to serve as consulting faculty over the last 22 years has been a blessing. In some small way the work allowed me to give back to the university that had blessed me beyond measure.

"But joining the Divinity School faculty full-time this summer came with a two-fold recognition: 1) God was moving me to invest ever more deeply in the formation of students who will become the next generation of pastors and lay leaders across the church; and 2) that this place, this particular ecumenical project—the work of the Duke Divinity School—represented the best that 21st-century theological education had to offer in North America, at a time when every avenue for theological education is being challenged. AEHS is an intense and concentrated microcosm of the wider Duke Divinity School effort to pursue a proclamation of the Christian message that is at once universal and again comprehensive, yet without ignoring or forfeiting distinction within the Body of Christ.”

Pastor, preacher, prophet, priest — I don’t think I fully appreciated all that ordination would ask of me. Nor did I imagine the ways in which improvisation would contribute both to survival and thriving. A more complete appreciation of these might have meant for me a little more time practicing the basic scales of the tradition and a little more time dancing in the streets both before and after ordination.

Meaningful experiences from pastoral experience: Holding a newborn. Baptizing a stillborn. Hearing a confession. Offering a cup of cold water. Preparing a couple for marriage. Sorting a divorce. Making budget. Providing sanctuary for the refugee. Replacing a roof. Celebrating the Eucharist. Blessing the people of God. Celebrating the Eucharist. Stories of catechesis. A vigil on the Capitol steps. Celebrating the Eucharist. Christmas Eve. Easter Eve. The All Saints’ Litany. The Great Litany. The Litany for Ordinations. Celebrating the Eucharist!

The Very Rev. Timothy Kimbrough

Vision for OBCS

  • Grow fundraising to support our students, expanding research initiatives, and other curricular activities.
  • Provide new kinds of educational opportunities that will equip both our students and the church to engage with new technologies and modalities of worship and outreach in the digital age.
  • Strengthen existing relationships with historic Black denominations while creating relationships with new Black reformations and fellowships and extending hospitality to new African immigrant churches and churches emerging from the various trajectories of the Caribbean diaspora.
  • Help our graduates find meaningful ministry and employment opportunities, both within the church and in non-ecclesial contexts.
  • Foster research on the Black Church within the context of the study of Black religion and help students reflect on the spiritual practices that have long sustained and nurtured the flourishing of Black lives in North America.
  • Partner with Black congregations regionally and beyond to promote innovation, ecologies of faith, learning, and community engagement.
  • Encourage non-Black churches to become more responsive and Christlike in their dealings on matters of racial justice and social equality.
A Black student wears OBCS robes in traditional colors
Timothy Kimbrough leads worship in Goodson

Vision for AEHS

  • AEHS welcomes and serves all students and constituents from across Anglican and Episcopal churches. Come with your desire to learn, we say. Come with your wonder about the practices of historic Christianity and the Prayer Book tradition, we say. Come from wherever you might be across the Episcopal and Anglican diaspora, we say. The open invitation itself could be viewed as uncommon or threatening in a culture and church society that has come to characterize identity by dissension and division. Nevertheless the open invitation remains a charism of AEHS.
  • Second, come in the knowledge that though the House will share common practices, students will not be like-minded. Learn of the Anglican tradition but without any need to homogenize. To believe in the ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church’ will require you commit to the pursuit of catholicity and holiness of life even in the face of impossible odds and improbable outcomes. It is precisely there in the midst of what cannot happen (or should not be happening) that the prophetic tradition proclaims: God will come and act.
  • Third, there’s a kind of holy fiction embodied in the mere constitution of an AEHS community. We are not what we declare. God in Christ means for us to become more than we are, more than we can imagine; never triumphant, ever aspirational; always confessing with an eye to the horizon and the coming City of God.