Biography

Rev. Dr. Natalya Cherry joined Brite Divinity School in 2018 as Assistant Professor in Methodist Studies and Theology. Dr. Cherry received her BA from Georgetown University, an MDiv from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC and a PhD from Southern Methodist University. She is an ordained Elder in the Susquehanna Conference of the United Methodist Church, where she pastored local churches from 2001-2013 and previously served on the ministry staffs of Bethesda UMC in Bethesda, MD and Metropolitan Memorial UMC in Washington, DC.

After serving in these ministry capacities for over 14 years, Dr. Cherry returned to the academy in order to encourage and equip theology students with an awareness of God’s grace, so that they may hear and respond boldly to God’s call to make a difference in this world with that same grace.

Dr. Cherry’s first book, Believing INTO Christ: Relational Faith and Human Flourishing, was released in Fall 2021. She contributed an invited chapter to The Wesleyan Mind, Joe Cunningham and Clive Murray Norris, editors (Oxford: Routledge, 2023) and also is in the early stages of co-authoring a new kind of biography of John Wesley with a senior scholar of United Methodist History.