Pauli Murray was a path-breaking poet, activist, attorney, professor, and Episcopal priest whose legacy of human rights work continues to reverberate. This lecture will explore the foundations of Murray’s preaching ministry, drawing on acts of protest, poems, letters, and sermons. Key friendships that enriched Murray’s preaching will also be explored. Overall, the lecture will offer a sketch of Murray’s vibrant vision of Christian spirituality and point to some contemporary implications.
Donyelle McCray serves as Associate Professor of Homiletics at Yale Divinity School. A teacher, writer, and Episcopal layperson, her scholarship focuses on ways African American women and lay people use the sermon to play, remember, invent, and disrupt. She is the author of The Censored Pulpit: Julian of Norwich as Preacher (2019) and a volume on sermon genre, Is it a Sermon?: Art, Activism, and Genre Fluidity in African American Preaching (Fall 2024). She is currently writing a book on the preaching and spirituality of the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray. Before becoming a homiletics professor, Donyelle served as an attorney focusing on wills, trusts, and estates. This work raised existential questions that led her to seminary and then into ministry as a hospice chaplain. Human finitude, compassion, and interdependence remain central theological concerns in her scholarship.