Brite Welcomes New Visiting Assistant Professor of Womanist Theology, Ethics, and Literature
The Rev. Dr. Jeania Ree Moore first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Theology from Yale University
Dr. Moore to join Brite community August 1, 2026
FORT WORTH, TEXAS – Today, Brite Divinity School is proud to welcome the Rev. Dr. Jeania Ree Moore as the new Visiting Assistant Professor of Womanist Theology, Ethics, and Literature. Dr. Moore, who recently made history as the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Theology from Yale University, joins Brite as a Louisville Institute Postdoctoral Fellow. The Louisville Institute creates intentional pathways for early career theological educators to develop as professionals and explore their calling to theological education.
Beginning this fall, Dr. Moore will draw on her expertise as a womanist theologian, Black studies scholar, writer, and justice advocate to educate Brite students throughout the next two years of her fellowship.
“I am thrilled to be joining the rich, theologically activated and socially engaged students, faculty, and staff at Brite Divinity School. Through my teaching, scholarship, and leadership, I aim to identify and embrace the theological imagination needed to survive and thrive in the present and shape the future,” Dr. Moore said.
“Brite’s location in the Southwest, its strong continuing legacy of womanist scholarship, and its deep work of on-the-ground social witness through ecclesial, scholarly, and public practice characterize a community that is and has been seeking, preaching, and laboring towards justice and hope. I look forward to joining Brite partners in this larger vision and work of flourishing.”
Dr. Moore’s academic research and writings engage with African American history and culture, Black women’s culture, epistemologies, and experiences through the lens of theology and ethics. Inspired by the romance novels she used to steal from her grandmother’s bookshelf, her doctoral dissertation—the first to be written by an African American woman in theology and Black Studies at Yale University—examines popular romance fiction as a site for Black women’s moral agency and theological manifestation of hope as social praxis.
Prior to obtaining her doctorate, Dr. Moore worked in faith-based legislative advocacy on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., leading efforts on immigration, gun violence prevention, criminal justice reform, and more as Director of Civil and Human Rights with The United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society.
“At Brite Divinity School, we are committed to cultivating teaching and theological scholarship that is as rigorous as it is generative for the life of the church and the world. We are especially proud to welcome the Rev. Dr. Jeania Ree Moore as an emerging teacher-scholar of extraordinary promise—whose work in womanist theology, ethics, and literature, and her vision of a ‘literature of hope,’ is reshaping the contours of theological inquiry,” said Rev. Dr. Shonda R. Jones, Brite’s Dean and Executive Vice President.
“Her intellectual brilliance, pastoral sensibility, and public theological voice signal a future for theological education that is deeply attuned to justice, creativity, and the sacred textures of everyday life.”
Dr. Moore is published in Sojourners Magazine, the Journal of Popular Romance Studies, the Anglican Theological Review, and other publications. A proud Southern Californian, she holds degrees from Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Candler School of Theology at Emory University.
Read Dr. Moore’s full bio here.